


A Slightly Shittier Parallel Universe

by Dracoduceus, FaiaHae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate explanations for the fall of overwatch, Crack Treated Seriously, Fluff and Crack, Genji Shimada is a Little Shit, Hanzo the Angstbucket, It's crack you guys, Jesse McCree & Genji Shimada Are Best Friends, Multi, Post-Recall, Reaper Bunnies, also pre-recall, behind the scenes of Overwatch, non-graphic canon-typical violence, our sprawling cards against humanity au, this started as a joke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-29
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-03-08 10:44:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 50,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13456581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaiaHae/pseuds/FaiaHae
Summary: In another world, Overwatch rose and fell to different forces. Its agents loved and lost and kept up some very strange and complicated traditions regarding a card game, half of which had been lost in a shipping malfunction years ago. Join us for sauerkraut, cheez whiz, and the most adorable little death bunny you've ever seen.___Formerly Cards Against Rationality. We found this card and couldn't resist the name change.





	1. The Rules

Overwatch had always been Emily’s heroes.

She’d grown up with posters of the Crisis’s veterans on her wall- Ana Amari, Reinhardt Wilhelm, Jack Morrison, Torbjörn Lindholm, Gabriel Reyes.

She’d kept them all up, stubborn, until the day Lena came home shellshocked and scared, talking about a mask who wielded two shotguns and moved like a dead man, the same old words on his tongue.

Still, she’d kept the rest. And even though her girlfriend was one of those heroes, and she regularly ate christmas dinner with another, Overwatch was larger than life.

 At least until she visited the base, and saw Torbjörn lick a wrench.

 She stopped dead in the doorway of the workshop, stunned. Had that…just happened? Satya, leading her, kept on walking and indicating doors, and after a moment Emily ran to catch up. Surely she was mistaken.

Except when they got to the kitchen, where Pharah Amari was sorting coffee mugs onto the shelves. Emily opened her mouth- to say something, ask about Ana, ask about the Egyptian military- when Pharah had picked up a blue mug, examined it, and licked the handle.

“What the fuck?”

Pharah turned at the squeak- Emily hadn’t actually been intelligible- and raised an eyebrow with all the nonchalance of someone who hadn’t done anything of note.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m showing her the base until Lena arrives.”

Satya sounded bored, leaning against the doorframe.

Pharah nodded, satisfied, and went back to putting mugs away.

 She left the blue one next to her on the counter.

* * *

It took another 20 minutes of tour and spotting at least 3 more people licking random objects before Emily finally broke.

“Why-.”

She stopped, staring fixedly at the bowl of rice Genji had just yanked from his brother’s hands and licked.

“Why are you all doing this??”

“Doing what?” Genji asked, absent-minded, as he dug into the stolen rice.

“Licking things???”

“It’s the rules.” Hanzo said stiffly, glaring at his brother.

“The rules?”

Hanzo raised his eyebrows at Reinhardt, who was holding a very small teapot in his giant hands and trying to pour it.

“You didn’t show her?”

Satya shrugged.

“It’s a foolish tradition.”

“What is?”

“The rules.” Hanzo repeated.

* * *

 

“The Rules” turned out to be a wall on the far side of the building, pinned all over with small white cards.

‘Licking things to claim them as your own’ was near the top. So was ‘Some god-damn peace and quiet’, ‘vigilante justice’, and ‘a balanced breakfast.’

Emily took a moment to take it all in, and shrugged.

“Alright.”

“It is a bit-” Satya’s nose was curled with disgust, but she didn’t get to finish her thought, because there was a bright blue flash, and Emily’s arms were suddenly very full of enthusiastic girlfriend.

“Love! You made it! Just got back from-”

Emily hoisted Lena in the air and leaned in, giving her a messy lick across the face. Lena looked flabbergasted for a minute, and then grinned.

“Aww, love!”

Satya rolled her eyes, hating the base and everyone in it as the two lovebirds took off down the hallway.


	2. Licking Things to Claim Them As Your Own (Family edition)

“Brigette.”

“Hmm?”

Brigette looked up at her father, hands frozen halfway through a rotation of the wrench on a tricky piece of Reinhardt’s armor. Torbjörn was eyeing the wrench in her hands. He reached out and took from her- finishing the rotation before hefting it in his palm.

“Do you remember the rules we had when you were younger?”

 

Brigette raised an eyebrow, resting her elbows on the massive chestplate.

“Yeah? Free samples and having hot pockets in the freezer at all times? Those rules?”

 

Torbjörn looked at the wrench in his hand.

“Do you remember what we said about claiming things?”

 

She remembered.

She tried not to look alarmed, shifting her stance with a forced casual air.

“But those were just silly things we did as kids, right? To remind us to share and all.”

 

Torbjörn looked her dead in the eyes, and then he licked the wrench. 

Not a little motion either- he ran his tongue down through the grease patches without flinching. Brigette looked on in horror. 

 

She took a step back. Torbjörn stared her down.

“You know what, I think I....I think I need some coffee!” She turned on her heel and sprinted out of the workshop.

 

Torbjörn paused a second, making sure she was gone, and then he lunged across the table, grabbing the cup of boba tea from Junkrat’s side of the counter, pulling off the lid and taking a swig. 

 

Junkrat looked on in disgust.

“Mate. That’s really not how you drink it.”

 

**__**

Brigette was new on base, which really shouldn’t have mattered. She’d been Reinhardt’s smith for years, and HE’D never licked anything (that she’d seen). But her speedwalking took her to the kitchen door, and next to the vacant oven was a  _ fucking golden tag on the wall.  _

 

It read “Free samples.”

There was a plate underneath it. 

 

She kept walking. 

___

 

She sees the cards at the end of the hall and nearly turns back again. God, no. It can’t be.

It is. 

 

It’s the  _ stupid fucking rules.  _

 

All of the little white cards that had once been on the family fridge at home- some new, some old. And at home there hadn’t been another board on the opposite wall that read BANNED in cheerful gold lettering that looked like someone had hacked up a holiday banner to rip out letters. 

 

Certainly wouldn’t have needed to put “Eugenics” on the board. 

She noticed, distantly, that there was an empty spot towards the middle with a lone, curled command strip and a rough circle of shotgun shrapnel. 

 

Huh.

 

She let out a helpless giggle.

Well, at least she was in mostly good company. 

****


	3. A cooler full of organs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There were many stories about the old Overwatch base - stories of heroes and their bravery. Those were stories that everyone knew, even so many years after the disbanding of Overwatch.
> 
> Less known were stories of the west wing of the base...stories of ghosts and hauntings and whispering in the darkness. 
> 
> Hana regrets her curiosity.

Hana cautiously poked her head into the workshop.

“Hey, Torb?” she called, having to shout to be heard over the ringing shriek of metal.

Torbjörn looked up and flicked off the laser cutter. “Hm?”

“What’s in the west wing of the base?”

There was a long moment of silence. Torbjörn drummed his fingers on the bench in front of him. “Horrors,” the engineer said at last with a hazy look in his remaining eye. “And coolers full of organs.” In the stunned silence that followed, Torbjörn flicked on the laser cutter on again, pointedly ending their conversation before it could continue.

Not one to easily give up, Hana sought out another old-timer. “Hey cowboy!”

McCree grinned and tipped his hat toward her. “Hey, little missy,” he said good-naturedly. To be fair, _most_ things about McCree were rather good-natured except when he was in combat. “What can I do ya for?”

“What’s in the west wing of the base?”

Almost immediately his cheerful grin vanished. “Nothing but horrors,” he said as seriously as she had ever heard him speak when he wasn’t in the field. “And coolers full of organs.”

He left quickly to the jingling of spurs and Hana let that sink in. Two people had given her almost the exact same response and that phrase again...coolers full of organs. Weighing her remaining options, she decided to try Reinhardt. He had a tendency to embellish stories but such a peculiar phrase wasn’t quite within his norm.

“Heya gramps!” she said when she found him in the gym.

“Hana!” he roared, dropping his weights with a ground-shaking _thump_ when he saw her. He wiped his sweaty face with the towel draped over his shoulders and looked about to offer her a hug before thinking better of it. “What can I do for you?”

Hana flopped down on one of the benches with a dramatic sigh. “I keep asking people a question,” she complained playfully. “But no one gives me a straight answer!” Reinhardt made a sympathetic noise as he sat down on the bench across from her. He picked up a barbell and continued his exercise. “What’s in the west wing of the base?”

She watched him closely and was able to see exactly when the question sank in. He looked grim in a way she only really saw when he talked about his mentor and the fight at Eichenwalde that cost him more than just his eye. “Don’t go there,” he said roughly. “There are nothing but horrors. And coolers full of organs.”

That was what she was waiting for! She leaned forward suddenly, excited. “That’s what everyone _else_ said!” she said and Reinhardt frowned. “It’s very strange that you all said the exact same thing, don’t you think?”

“Because we all know what’s down there,” Reinhard said sombrely. “ _Don’t go there._ ”

Hana huffed. “Maybe I’d listen if you actually _told_ me what was down there.”

For a long moment Reinhardt didn’t say anything. The only sound between them was the click of the weight as it shifted in his hand and his quiet grunts as he continued his routine. At last he sighed. He told her.

* * *

“So there was this geneticist, right?”

“Hana,” Genji interrupted nervously. It was the fourth time he had done so and every time he said the same thing. “I mean it, you really shouldn’t go.”

Hana heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Come _on_ , what are you, chicken? _Ggo ggo dek!_ ” She flapped her elbows like crude wings with an impish smirk at him. Much to her surprise, he didn’t rise to the bait as he typically did and continued to look worried. She crossed her arms and rolled her eyes.

“You don’t understand,” Genji pleaded. “ _Don’t_ go down there.”

Lúcio glanced between the two of them as they walked between the buildings. “What about the geneticist?” he asked as neutrally as he could.

So reminded, Hana turned to the DJ. “Yeah! So this geneticist, Dr. O’Darling-”

“O’Deorain,” Genji corrected automatically and then looked around nervously as if afraid that the doctor would jump out at them.

Hana rolled her eyes. “Yeah, well, _Rein_ says that she had labs down in the west wing and did some really freaky things down there. _All_ of the oldtimers say it’s haunted down there.”

“It is!” Genji insisted. “You don’t understand.”

“I _know_ ,” Hana said with another theatrical sigh. “There’s nothing down there but horrors and coolers full of corpses.”

“Organs,” Genji corrected automatically and looked like he regretted it.

Lúcio glanced at the cyborg out of the corner of his eye. “Does that make it any better?”

“No I just... _look_ . I’m serious. Hana, _please_.” They all paused to look at Genji. His faceplate was off, held in one cybernetic hand. Unlike his brother, his face was more often than not as open as a book. A picture book, even - no words needed. Now his expression spoke of just how worried for them he was.

Hana crossed her arms. “I want to know,” she said firmly. “If I’m going to stay here, I can’t just... _not_ know. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

Seeing his crestfallen look as Hana turned and began walking toward the entrance to the bunker that was more or less the west wing of the base, Lúcio squeezed Genji’s shoulder reassuringly. “Don’t worry,” he said, wiggling the flashlight in his hands. Unactivated glowsticks - the cheap kinds bought for raves and concerts - hung on a loose string around his neck. “I’ll stay with her.” He squeezed Genji’s shoulder again and trotted after Hana.

When they turned back again at the door to the bunker, Genji was gone.

* * *

They heard Hanzo’s footsteps before they saw him, a courtesy since they knew that Hanzo could travel quieter than the wind when he sought to.

“ _Oji-san!_ ” Hana exclaimed teasingly when he turned the corner.

Lúcio waved cheerfully when the light of Hanzo’s flashlight drifted over toward him. “Hello, hello,” he said cheerfully.

“Genji was worried,” Hanzo said in lieu of a greeting as he inclined his head in a polite bow.

Groaning, Hana crossed her arms though her exasperated expression wasn’t very convincing. “I’m surprised you’re not armed.”

“He wanted me to bring Storm Bow,” Hanzo admitted. “And he did not appreciate it when I told him that it would be useless against spirits if that is indeed what was down here.”

Hana and Lúcio giggled. “I knew there was a sense of humor in there somewhere!” Hana teased.

“Shall we continue?” Lúcio asked, gesturing grandly with his free hand toward the dark hallways. They hadn’t proceeded very far into the wing before Hanzo found them and were still above ground so that the dying rays of the setting sun still lingered in the cracks in the boards covering the windows.

“So,” Hanzo said with poorly-concealed interest. “Why are you so adamant about exploring the west wing?”

Trusting Lúcio to lead the way, Hana turned around to face Hanzo. “Well,” she began excitedly. “There was this geneticist that used to be housed on this side of the base. From what Rein told me, she was really into some freaky stuff and did all kinds of crazy experiments down there. After she was kicked out, they say that this place is haunted.”

Hanzo frowned at her. They all stopped at the top of the stairs and looked down. Ahead of them, darkness loomed; Lúcio wiggled the switch and none of them were surprised when none of the lights flickered on.

“Well,” he said, falsely cheerful as he pulled off a light stick from the cord around his neck. “Guess we start here.” He briskly cracked it, shook it to get the reaction going, and placed it on the ground at the top of the stairs. “You ready?”

They both looked to Hana, somehow their de facto leader, and waited for her response. She stared down into the darkness of the stairwell. It seemed to swallow even the bright glow of her flashlight as it swayed nervously from left to right and back again. Taking a deep breath, Hana nodded. “Let’s go.”

None of them dared to speak as they very carefully crept down the stairs. Hanzo pulled out a small electric lantern and traded Hana for her small flashlight when she wordlessly reached for it.

“It’s so _clean_ ,” Lúcio whispered as they reached the landing and all of them flinched at the strange way the darkness seemed to swallow his voice.

They all jumped - even Hanzo, who was notoriously difficult to startle - when they heard a loud _thump_ and the sound of something shuffling somewhere beyond the safe, golden glow of their lights. Everything fell silent; a moment later there was another _thump_ and in the distance a fan turned on, stirring the stale air.

“How is the fan on without lights?” Hana asked in a cracked whisper. She crept a little closer to Lúcio, knowing that Hanzo wouldn’t appreciate her impeding his movements.

“Geothermal?” Lúcio suggested halfheartedly. “Maybe the lights are out because the bulbs are dead?”

Hanzo grunted. “After so long I can’t imagine the wiring is still intact.” Seeing the uncomfortable looks shot at him, he added unconvincingly, “Probably geothermal. Or solar.”

After shuffling nervously in their cluster, they began walking again. They turned into the first dark doorway they encountered and entered what looked like it had once been an observation room. Desks that may have once been white were shoved against a wall, littered by the remains of shelves that now lay crooked or hanging by a few rusted screws and brackets to the wall. Old boxes, worn by time and the nibbling of pests lay slouched, glass and metal instruments spilling out.

“No coolers full of organs in here,” Hana declared with a hysterical edge to her voice. They all winced when the room echoed strangely. Something shuffled in the shadows and Hanzo’s flashlight snapped to the corner it came from.

They saw nothing.

For a long moment they held their breaths, their eyes on the still circle of light cast by Hanzo’s flashlight, listening for the sound.

“Maybe it was the vents again,” Lúcio suggested halfheartedly. They all ignored the still air in front of the vent next to them and nodded perhaps a little too quickly.

“Maybe it was a rodent,” Hana said with a bravery she didn’t quite feel, taking a few steps into the room and poking at one of the boxes where it had been torn into. She leaped back in surprise when a puff of black dust drifted out of the hole. Realizing that she had jumped at nothing, Hana let out a high giggle that she immediately muffled when Lúcio sent her a pained look.

Hanzo’s light swept carefully along the dusty ground; unlike the strangely sterile stairway, this room was coated with a thick layer of grayish dust and dirt. There were no footprints or signs of anyone else in the room, at least none for a long time.

“I’m just freaking myself out,” Hana said with a transparent laugh. Still, she quickly backed away from the box and looked at the shelf behind it. “Cool, check it out! A microscope.”

She reached for it and Hanzo obligingly swept his light back to give her more to see by. Lúcio cracked and shook another glow stick and left it in the doorway, carefully balancing it on its wide base so it stood on one end. “So we can find our way back,” he explained though no one had asked. He, at least, was better at hiding his nervousness.

“Coolers full of organs?” Hanzo asked and they looked at him oddly before they remembered what Hana had said only moments before.

“Yeah,” Hana agreed as she tried to wiggle the heavy contraption off the shelf. The dilapidated cardboard box in front of her, half of its contents (books, maybe, or notebooks?) strewn around on the ground rather than packed away, made it difficult to reach. “Weird, right? I asked a bunch of the veterans - the old guys, you know? They all said the same thing. ‘Nothing down there, Hana, nothing but horrors and coolers full of organs.’”

Hanzo glanced at her. “All of them?” Lúcio asked. “Could it be coincidence?”

“Nope,” Hana said, popping her lips on the ‘pe’. “They all said it the same way. They said that there were ‘horrors’ and ‘coolers full of organs’. Those same words!”

They all jumped when Hana squeaked; the microscope dropped from her hands and thumped heavily into the box in front of the shelf. Predictably it fell straight through the warped and rodent-eaten cardboard. Black dust swirled out of the holes, drifting in smoky curls over the floor.

Hana scrambled back when the dust didn’t dissipate or settle. It continued to drift in wisping swirls, traveling much further than they would have expected. The blue light cast the glowstick on the ground caught on some of the edges, giving it an almost metallic glow.

Lúcio swallowed audibly. “Maybe it’s like those lakes,” he said halfheartedly. Hanzo and Hana looked at him incredulously, turning their heads very slowly to keep the strange black smoke in their field of view. “You know...the lakes. The water’s separated into layers. Maybe something in there was just lighter than air.”

“Thermocline,” Hanzo said automatically. He took his eyes off the smoke and looked a little embarrassed when Hana and Lúcio both turned their heads and raised their brows at him. “Layers of water from temperature or density...and it would be _denser_ than air, not lighter.” When they looked back at the smoke, they found that it had disappeared.

Shaking his head so hard that his dreads clicked, Lúcio backed up into the hallway. “ _Nope_ ,” he said with emphasis. “Nope,” he said again, “we’re _not_ doing this.”

“Alright,” a voice said behind Lúcio. It seemed too-loud after their furtive whispers and they all yelled or shrieked in horror. “ _Shit!_ ”

The knife embedded in the wall behind McCree’s head wiggled. The man himself clutched his hat to his head, his body twisted out of the way as if he had tried to dodge. “McCree!” Lúcio exclaimed, pressing a splayed hand to his chest as if to calm his thundering heart. “Man, don’t _scare_ us like that.”

Wordlessly the cowboy turned to eye the knife and then Hanzo. “Y’ almost took my head off,” he said wonderingly.

“Nothing so dramatic,” Hanzo said tightly, his hands shaking just a little with leftover adrenaline and just a little bit of fear. Regardless of the semantics, he _had_ almost hit McCree with the knife; if he hadn’t twitched his hand at the last second, if McCree hadn’t dodged just the right way, it would have gone through his eye.

Hana bounced on her toes as McCree very carefully pulled the knife out of the wall and offered it to Hanzo hilt-first. “It ain’t even a throwin’ knife,” he muttered as Hanzo tucked it back into whatever interdimensional pocket he had drawn it from.

“That’s what you get for sneaking up on us!” Hana scolded, propping her fists on her hips. “What are you doing here, cowboy? Where are your spurs?”

They all glanced down at McCree’s boots and sure enough, his spurs were missing. He was also dressed in dark blue jeans and a tight black v-neck shirt, which hadn’t helped in distinguishing him from the clinging shadows in the windowless halls of the west wing. His combat belt, complete with his standard flashbangs, quick-loaders full of ammo, and Peacekeeper, was strapped around his hips in its customary spot.

“What is the phrase?” Hanzo asked rhetorically. “You need a bell, cowboy.”

“Yer one to talk,” McCree retorted. He clapped his hands together, a disturbingly loud sound in the crushing silence in the halls of the subterranean wing. “Alrighty then, y’all had yer fun, now it’s time t’ mosey along up where it’s safe.”

McCree should have known that would only encourage Hana. “‘Where it’s safe’?” she demanded. “What’s down here that’s got you all spooked?” she jabbed a finger at McCree. “And _don’t_ you say ‘horrors’ and ‘coolers full of corpses’.”

“ _Organs_ ,” McCree corrected automatically and winced, looking around furtively as if afraid that someone _else_ would emerge from the shadows. “Look,” he said with a heavy sigh, running his flesh hand restlessly through his hair. “Dark shit went down here, ‘kay? Can’t blame us fer not wantin’ t’ dig up the past when it should _stay_ buried.”

Hana huffed. “Well _I_ want to know,” she said. “And since no one _else_ will tell me more, I’m going to find it myself.”

She stomped past him and continued down the hall. Lúcio darted after her, chasing the edges of light cast by her little lantern. With a glance at McCree, Hanzo tipped his head in the direction that they went. “I’m keeping an eye on them,” he told the other man softly with a slight smirk. “If you’re _too scared_ , cowboy, you can return upstairs. We won’t hold it against you.”

Hanzo brushed past him and walked - loud enough for Hana and Lúcio to hear him so he wouldn’t scare them again - down the dark hallway. Grumbling to himself about bad ideas, McCree followed, his own booted feet tapping in an echo of Hanzo’s.

Hana and Lúcio were waiting in the doorway of another room, silhouetted by the small golden light in Hana’s hands against the inky darkness she stood against. On the wall beside the doorway was a faded card held against the wall by an aged piece of tape that crinkled when his fingers touched it. Hanzo very carefully peeled it off while his companions peered into the new room. In his hand was a glossy paper card covered in a thick layer of grime and dust that obscured the printed black writing.

They all jumped when they heard a shuffling noise in the hallway behind them. Turning, they found the blue glowstick Lúcio had propped up on its end rolling on the ground.

Hana stomped her feet though the light in her hands wavered nervously. “ _I knew it!_ ” she exclaimed shrilly. “Genji, you ass, stop it!”

She jumped again when McCree drew Peacekeeper and gently herded her behind him with his prosthetic arm. “That ain’t Genji,” he said, his voice a little shaky as well. Still, his gun arm was steady as he slowly raised it.

“No,” Hana snapped, nerves making her temper unusually short. She stomped her feet not unlike a petulant child, blooms of color rising to her cheeks in frustration. “He tried to scare us out of coming down here and _I don’t like it!_ ”

The glowstick stopped moving suddenly as if something held it down. With a squeak, Hana hid behind McCree’s broad back. Lúcio did the same and they gripped each other as Hanzo moved in beside McCree to cover them. His knife was back in his hand, held by the hilt; another was held by the point in his other, ready to serve as a projectile if need be. As McCree had said, they weren’t throwing knives but if need be they would serve well enough.

Wisps of black smoke drifted from the open doorway of the observation room, the edges glittering in the light cast by the glowstick.

“Hey, it’s that thermo-thingie,” Lúcio said tentatively. His voice still shook. “M-maybe it’s from the vents?”

No one said anything and a moment later the wisp disappeared as if it had retreated back into the room; as if something had sucked it back in. “I don’t like this,” McCree muttered out of the side of his mouth. He gestured to the door behind them. “Through there’s another exit.”

As the one with the largest light, Hana made to go first but Lúcio muttered a quick, “wait”. He removed two more glowsticks from his makeshift necklace, cracked and shook them to activate their weak glow (pink and neon green this time), and tossed them into the clinging darkness ahead of them. They rolled across the ground and came to rest against a desk.

There was no smoke in that room, and no sign of anything else. “Looks clear,” Hanzo said with a quick glance into the shadows of the room. Lúcio threw another glowstick into the room a moment later and still nothing stirred. “Appears to be empty.”

Behind them, McCree grunted.

As a unit they crept into the room, chasing the shadows with their lights. McCree held Hanzo’s flashlight beneath his raised right hand, the muzzle of his gun chasing the illuminated circle.

“Straight across,” McCree coached as his light drifted into the next corner of the room. It opened up into a small library filled with shelves and Hana squeaked, backing up into Lúcio when the shivering glow of her lantern illuminated the inhabitants of the shelves.

Rabbits. Large ones, small ones, all in varying shades and patterns of black, all of them with eyes that glittered wetly in the light cast by her little lantern. The biggest one of all - bigger than any of them had ever seen before - rested on the desk in the middle of the room. The glowsticks Lúcio had tossed in caught on the wispy edges of its fur, highlighting its swirling motion.

Like smoke.

“The smoke we saw,” Hana hissed. The rabbits continued to stare in silent judgment.

“Not a thermo-thing,” Lúcio agreed weakly.

The largest rabbit, easily the size of a medium-sized dog, watched them with beady black eyes; the very tips of its ears seemed to dissolve into mist that swirled in the air like smoke. Its nose twitched. “ _Die_ ,” it whispered.

Suddenly the room was full of sound, of dozens of whispering voices saying, “ _Die, die, die, die_.” The big rabbit, the head of their group, tensed its enormous hindquarters.

“ _Move_ ,” McCree snapped and shoved himself in front of Hana. Peacekeeper’s roar echoed as he fanned the hammer; the rabbit exploded in a cloud of black smoke that slowly fell to the desk.

The silence left behind in the aftermath made their ears ring - or perhaps that was Peacekeeper herself. Even the other rabbits fell as silent and still as statues. “ _Hell yeah_ ,” McCree crowed as he quickly reloaded, more an automatic reflex than a conscious thing. Lúcio and Hanzo began nudging him and Hana toward the opposite door. “Yee-haw!”

“Oh no,” Hana moaned and Hanzo and Lúcio turned to look. The rabbit that McCree had just shot was reforming, a black miasma swirling into a little vortex before settling on its shape. It gave off more smoke this time, as if wreathed in fire; its eyes glowed red.

“ _DIE DIE DIE,_ ” the lead rabbit hissed in a voice that was stronger but still eerily quiet. It bunched its muscles as it prepared to jump.

“ _Nope!_ ” Lúcio cried.

“ _Run!_ ” Hanzo agreed. Seeing Hana frozen, he and McCree grabbed her each by an arm and dragged her along with them. Lúcio’s light bounced just ahead of them, illuminating the way as they ran; behind they could hear the patters and hisses of dozens of little feet as they were chased. The voices of the demonic rabbits filled the corridors around them: _diediediediediedie_.

Then something strange happened: the lantern in Lúcio’s began glowing with a soft green glow, a gentle beat thrummed, and they began to speed up. Suddenly their legs began moving faster, as if they had been wading through water before. Almost cartoonishly fast, they flew down the halls.

“ _What’s going on?_ ” Hana demanded but even so didn’t stop.

The circle of Lúcio’s light didn’t waver but he tossed his head to look at them over his shoulder. Hanzo could see the whites all around his eyes. “Don’t ask, just run!” he advised.

“I _told_ y’all this was a bad idea!” McCree couldn’t help but point out.

“Shut up!” Hanzo hissed as they flew down the halls. The seething mass of black smoke, nebulous forms of enormous rabbits, and too many glowing scarlet eyes was falling behind along with their eerie chorus of _die die die_. “Keep running!”

From the clinging darkness ahead, a wall appeared: a T-junction. “Which way?” Lúcio demanded over his shoulder.

McCree barely managed to avoid scratching his head as he thought, trying to bring back distant memories of playing pranks on Moira. Come to think of it, there was probably an old card down here from an even older game…

“ _McCree!_ ” Hanzo snapped.

Right. “Uh,” he said, drawing out the sound as he thought. “Right!” Wait, there had been a cave-in even back in the golden days. Faulty wiring and support, all corroded by the salt air. “No, left, _left!_ ”

The corner approached and they all tried to turn left but unused to the speed and unable to get traction on the dusty tile, they slipped and skidded in a pile straight into the wall, drawing long furrows in the dirt and dust behind them. In any other situation, it would have been comical but as it was they were just extremely grateful that McCree didn’t have his spurs on.

“Hurry!” Lúcio urged, the first to leap back to his feet. The seething horde of ghostly bunnies approached.

Hanzo and McCree each grabbed one of Hana’s arms and dragged her behind them as they began running again, waiting until she got her feet under her and was running under her own power before letting go. In the gloom, another junction emerged.

“Right!” McCree cried without being prompted and this time their turn was much smoother.

The doorways passed in a blur but when Hanzo looked over his shoulder the horde behind them was no longer visible. “I think they’re gone,” he said cautiously, beginning to slow his pace. Lúcio glanced back at him and he could still see the whites all around his eyes.

“Nope,” McCree said firmly and without slowing himself, scooped Hanzo into his arms. “We’re almost out,” he added. “Hurry!”

If McCree was bothered by his weight or bulk, he gave no sign. But it gave Hanzo time to look backwards over his shoulder and he saw that the cowboy was right: the seething mass of shadows was still there, further back than it had been previously and much quieter, but still giving chase.

“Up the stairs! There’s a quarantine door at the top,” McCree huffed and they obeyed, taking the stairs two at a time as they lunged for the bright rectangle of golden light.

They collapsed in a heap just beyond the great doors and with a grunt Reinhardt swung them shut. There was a groan and a pneumatic hiss as the great leaves of riveted steel sealed and another great _boom_ as the locks engaged.

For a long moment they lay on the ground in various poses of exhaustion, staring down at the sandy earth or the diamond-studded sky.

McCree was exhausted, sweaty, and shaky. His legs were tangled with Hanzo’s, the metal plating of his knees digging in to the soft skin of his own despite the barrier of his jeans. If he wasn’t still running high on adrenaline he’d have an entirely different reaction to such close proximity to the archer but for now all he could do was lie back and stare up at the stars.

A head appeared over his and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the small lantern that Ana held in her hands. “So,” she said in a gentle drawl. “What did we all learn?”

“I…I hate bunnies,” Hana moaned into the sand. “And it’s _my symbol_.”

Still tangled and halfway into McCree’s lap, Hanzo shifted and brought a hand to his face. In it was a crumpled piece of paper which he carefully unfolded after his white-knuckled grip had creased it.

“I _told_ you,” McCree said, doing his best to ignore how nice Hanzo’s legs felt entwined with his. “I told _all_ y’all. Nothin’ down there but horrors and-”

“‘A cooler full of organs’,” Hanzo said with him.

McCree lifted his head to look at the other man. “Exactly!” he crowed before he realized that Hanzo wasn’t even looking at him, but at a dirty scrap of paper in his hands.

“No,” Hanzo said, rolling his head to look at McCree. Seeming to suddenly realize their position, his face flushed and he kicked himself free. Sand and dirt clung to the sweat stains on the back of his shirt and to the strands of his hair where it had escaped his tie. More of the ubiquitous black dust from the abandoned halls of the west wing clung to his damp skin and McCree was likely no better off. Hanzo held up the dirty piece of paper in his hands.

It was a small card of what had once been glossy white paper with black print:

_A cooler full of organs._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Bonus:**  
>  When Hanzo woke from sleeping - as with many things - it was not done by halves. This was also true with nightmares or....unpleasant dreams. 
> 
> Now he lay awake in bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking of what had chased him from his rest. 
> 
> Just a few days ago he had followed Hana and Lúcio down into the bowels of the west wing. They had all escaped unscathed and after firm scoldings from the veterans and especially Angela, they had been released. Still, thoughts of that experience plagued him. 
> 
> No; that was dishonest. In truth, it wasn’t thoughts of the experience itself that plagued him, but rather the thought of the resident cowboy, the sharpshooter Jesse McCree. 
> 
> McCree hadn’t really said why he had gone down there after them and Hanzo was fairly certain that Genji wouldn’t have asked anyone else to go, not when he had already asked Hanzo. Or perhaps he _had_ and McCree had been the only one crazy enough to want to go. In many ways it was difficult to tell with this new iteration of Genji; he was much like the wild young man that Hanzo once knew and yet in many ways was much more mature. 
> 
> Putting a murderer like Hanzo in danger was one thing, but a cherished teammate like McCree was a completely different issue. 
> 
> Perhaps the worst part about the whole experience was not the horrors they had found but perhaps the aftermath. Specifically the dreams - dreams of McCree carrying him out. 
> 
> In hindsight there was no way he would have survived if Lúcio hadn’t done...whatever he had done and there was no way that he would have been able to survive when he slowed his pace if McCree hadn’t carried him out. There lay his dilemma: his dreams are filled with warm hands, the faint scent of smoke and gunpowder, and a voice with a strong Southern accent. 
> 
> He almost _wished_ for nightmares of the rabbits chasing them, of their eerie not-quite-there voices whispering _die_...but instead he dreamt of rough hands and a rough voice, of being wrapped in a thick blanket that smelled like cigarette smoke and gunpowder and lingering sweat. Instead of a mysterious card he had found pinned to a wall with aging tape, a card that had matched their Rule Board in the common room, he dreamt of kisses that taste like beer and whiskey and tobacco and the feeling of a warm body pressing against his. 
> 
> After a long moment of deliberation - one that was very decidedly not spent thinking about McCree - Hanzo rolled out of bed and padded into the small bathroom attached to his suite for a cold shower.


	4. Drinking Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hanzo forced himself to loosen his grip on the neck of the whiskey bottle. Breathe. In. Out. Only following the rules - he cannot drink alone.

Though he wouldn’t admit it even to himself, it was _ Genji _ that had actually gave him the idea, even if  ~~ the little shit ~~ his beloved brother  _ had _ stolen his breakfast. 

(Genji had licked the bowl and packet for his instant miso. “This is mine now, brother,” he said with a wicked grin on his scarred lips. “Those are the rules.” He had watched in impotent frustration as Genji poured hot water from the kettle into the bowl and mixed in the packaged miso paste. “Eat breakfast with the rest of the team,  _ anija _ ,” he had advised quietly. “Torbjörn is actually quite a good cook even if he needs a step-stool to see over the counter!”)

The incident had reminded Hanzo of the rule board (and to a lesser extent, the mystery of the rule card he had found in the western wing of the base). Pinned to the  **BANNED** heading of the board were a handful of cards, the most recent addition being a handwritten post-it that read  _ coolers full of organs  _ _ or _ _ corpses _ .

Most pointedly (to Hanzo at least) was the card in the middle of the list:  _ drinking alone _ .

Which led him to his current situation. Hanzo forced himself to loosen his grip on the neck of the whiskey bottle. Breathe. In. Out. Only following the rules - he cannot drink alone. Ergo, asking McCree to drink with him is only natural. McCree may not be the only heavy drinker on base- but he certainly couldn’t let his guard down so freely around Reinhardt or the oldest of the old guard (he pushed any consideration of what it mean that he could around McCree out of his mind). In. Out.

What was-?

Hanzo tipped his head back and took a deep breath before realizing that he looked like a common street cur smelling the air. Still...there was a delicious smell winding its way down the hall. There were plenty of days that Hanzo regretted picking a room down the hall from the kitchen since cooking things that smelled appealing seemed to elude a decent number of the team (even the late commander Morrison had been banned from cooking inside, a rule that was for some reason still in effect) but this...

Comparing this to the pungent and not always pleasant smells of Angela’s heath foods or Hana’s various ferments would be blasphemous. 

Curious despite his nervousness, he followed his nose and froze in the doorway of the kitchen, whiskey bottle still in his hands. 

McCree.

It had to be McCree. 

He nearly turned on his heels and fled, but no, of  _ course  _ damnable McCree would pick that moment to turn and flash him a smile that made him feel warm all over.

“Hey there. Just finishing up here. Wanna try-”

“Drink with me.” 

It had left Hanzo’s mouth before he was consciously aware he was going to say it, and they both stared at each other for a moment in mutual surprise before Hanzo doubled down, stiffly offering the bottle of whiskey. 

“We are not permitted to drink alone according to the rules, so I require your company.” He tipped his chin back, forcing himself to meet McCree’s gaze head on.

The cowboy looked dazed for a moment, then grinned. “Alright then. Y’mind waiting for me to put out the samples? I can make us a plate.”

Hanzo’s heart flipped in his chest. Drinking with McCree was one thing. Drinking with McCree while sharing food he’d cooked felt like something entirely different.

But no. McCree was merely being polite and Hanzo had interrupted him at an inconvenient moment. Nothing more.

He opened his mouth to voice a retraction - a delay, anything - but McCree had already placed a circle of mini quesadillas on the free samples platter and divided the remainder between two plates. He was whistling cheerfully as he grabbed a handful of napkins and strode out the door, trading a plate for the whiskey as he passed. 

Well.

As long as the cowboy was happy. 

Feeling a little lost, Hanzo trailed after McCree out of the base proper and up the stairs to the roof access of the comm tower. “So,” the other man said as he settled down with an exaggerated sigh. He set down the bottle of whiskey in front of him and gestured for Hanzo to join him. “What are we drinking to forget?” 

Hanzo hesitated before slipping into  _ seiza _ . A moment later he shifted out of it and sat with his legs crossed and his plate cradled in his lap. 

_ <You.> _ Hanzo didn’t say. Instead he grabbed a triangle of quesadilla and stuffed the whole thing into his mouth. 

Seemingly unbothered by Hanzo’s lack of answer, McCree cracked open the bottle and took a swig without looking away. He licked the lingering sting from his lips and tipped the neck toward Hanzo; their fingers brushed when Hanzo took the bottle from him. 

“Don’t need no reason,” McCree rushed to reassure Hanzo though he showed no sign of needing it. “Ain’t gonna judge you none.” 

Hanzo swallowed the whiskey with a barely-concealed frown of distaste. McCree tried not to laugh - doing so would probably imply to Hanzo that McCree had been watching him close enough to watch the bob of his throat as he swallowed the bite of quesadilla, then the large gulp of whiskey. He popped another bite into his fool mouth to keep it from saying anything else. 

“A cooler full of organs,” Hanzo blurted. His throat bobbed as he swallowed again and McCree was definitely  _ not _ watching that, no sir. He most certainly wasn’t watching the play of shadows on the curve of his throat or the tendons of his neck. “That’s...um…”

“Yeah,” McCree said awkwardly and reached for the bottle of whiskey at the same time that Hanzo did. Their fingers brushed and then recoiled as if they were burned. “Oh. Sorry.”

Hanzo curled his fingers, too dazed by the shadow of McCree’s warmth to remember to respond. Thankfully, the cowboy wasn’t a man to let the silence hang too long, and he nudged the bottle back towards Hanzo. 

“Quite a thing. Brave o’ ya t’ go with them.”

Hanzo snorted, taking another swig of whiskey and holding it out to McCree. “It is brave to go into danger to protect those who know no better. I was only foolish.”

McCree’s grin was like a sunrise, a soft warmth blooming slow on his lips. Hanzo forced his eyes away as McCree took the bottle back. 

“Naw. You were on yer guard. You coulda taken ‘em alone just as well as I could, only you woulda done it with a few knives and some old lab stuff.” McCree took a swig and put the bottle back on the ground between them. Neutral space. 

Nervously, Hanzo toyed with the edge of his plate and then with another triangle of quesadilla. “Genji asked me to go after them because he was worried,” he admitted quietly. “And I was curious as well so I agreed. But when he tried to warn me of the dangers I...I just…”

McCree barked out a rough laugh. “Y’ brushed it off ‘cos the idea o’ ghosts are ridiculous.” 

“Yes,” Hanzo agreed and was glad that McCree didn’t make mention of the fact that he and his brother were able to summon spirit dragons in battle. It seemed like a flimsy excuse given that context. 

“Can’t say I blame ya,” McCree agreed with a huff. “Th’ doctor...she was a piece o’ work.” 

Hanzo smiled shyly and reached for the bottle again. “To memories best forgotten?” he asked, lifting it in a mocking toast. The next sip didn’t burn as badly and he swallowed as he held the bottle out to McCree. 

“Amen t’  _ that _ ,” the gunslinger said with feeling. His grin was wide as he reached for the bottle. Their fingers brushed again and the contact lasted longer this time. Neither of them said anything about how McCree’s fingers lingered on Hanzo’s scarred knuckles or how Hanzo’s fingers brushed against the calluses of McCree’s palm as he released his grip. 

They fell into silence, broken only by the click of the glass bottle as they passed it back and forth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Bonus (because DC has little self-control):**
> 
> Genji jumped out of one of the nearby ducts, his armor smeared with dust and whatever filth he had encountered in the vents. “WHY WON’T YOU TWO KISS ALREADY?” He made a crude gesture with his hands - a circle of his left thumb and pointer finger vigorously filled by the pointer and middle fingers of his right hand - to show that he wasn’t really talking about _kissing_.
> 
> “Sometimes I wish you actually killed him,” McCree muttered, the bottle halfway to his lips.
> 
> “Feel free to try yourself,” Hanzo huffed, bringing a hand to his face. “He’s like a roach - he just won’t die.”
> 
> Suddenly, Genji fell over flat on his face, a familiar dart sticking out from the rounded armor of his butt. “ _It’s alright,_ ” they heard Ana’s distant voice shout. “ _I got it. You may continue._ ” 
> 
> “ _It was too big a target, his butt,_ ” Reinhardt bellowed from the same general direction of Ana’s voice. “ _But now you can enjoy your date._ ”
> 
> “ _Throw his body off the cliff!_ ” Lena shouted from a similar direction. “ _Wanker deserves it!_ ” 
> 
> McCree tipped his hat to cover his face. “Who else is there?” he demanded.
> 
> “ _No one else,_ ” Zenyatta shouted back unconvincingly and they all heard the team’s loud _shush_ ing.


	5. Mutually-assured Destruction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Soldier 76 arrived on a rainy spring day, out of the heaviest fog there had been in months, and he was still recognized before he made it to the door.

Soldier 76 arrived on a rainy spring day, out of the heaviest fog there had been in months, and he was still recognized before he made it to the door. McCree had waved off most of the welcoming squad, saying something that sounded more than a little threatening about having a “friendly little chat” with their “newest recruit.” (Sure, Athena’s software could recognize  _ Jack fucking Morrison _ anywhere, but if he needed to keep up pretenses they weren’t going to push him.)

Well,  _ most _ of them weren’t going to push him. 

Jesse was determined to make himself the exception. 

Hanzo had arrived a little after most of the welcoming committee had adjourned to the conference room to wait out whatever conversation was about to happen. Jesse had lifted his head at the sound of footsteps with an expression that was downright hostile, but had relaxed right away at the sight of Hanzo. 

He tipped his hat, amiable as always. It was never difficult with Hanzo, even when cold fury still simmered in his veins. “Y’might not wanna be here for this.”

Hanzo stopped and leaned casually against the opposite wall, raising an eyebrow. “Do you  _ need  _ me here for this?”

McCree’s heart damn near went pitter-patter in his chest. Man had a way about him. Made him feel downright soft sometimes. “Naw. I could take him.”

Hanzo rolled his eyes. “I feel that in this particular case, murder is  _ probably _ not the answer.”

Jesse grinned, despite himself. Though Hanzo tried to hide it beneath his best mask, he had a wicked - and sometimes rather dark - sense of humor. 

“Can’t technically murder someone who’s legally dead.”

Hanzo shot him a look - combined amusement and irritation - that made McCree’s chest tighten. “It’s inadvisable.”

“I know darlin’, promise I’ll play nice. But I got some stuff t’ tell him that he’s not gonna wanna address with people around.”

Hanzo took the gentle dismissal with grace, nodding and touching McCree’s shoulder lightly.

“Com me if you suspect the situation will deteriorate, but I will not come unless you say so.”

McCree tried very hard not to make a “that’s what she said” joke. From the look in Hanzo’s dark eyes that was somehow both amused and pained, he realized the innuendo in his well-meant words.

“Thanks darlin’,” McCree said, tipping the brim of his hat again and Hanzo gave him the tiniest fraction of a smile.

* * *

Ever the dramatic one, Soldier 76 nodded serenely when they were alone. “So you know.” 

McCree pinched the bridge of his nose with his left hand, hoping that the cold would shock him enough to wake him up from the nightmare he was in. “Know  _ what _ ?” McCree asked with a heavy sigh. It was mostly a rhetorical question, asked with a sour note of sarcasm, but clearly Soldier 76 didn’t realize this.

“Who I am,” Soldier 76 said seriously. “My secret identity.” 

“God grant me patience,” McCree muttered, a familiar prayer he had heard and used a thousand times before in Blackwatch. “Because if You give me strength, I’m gonna beat the  _ shit _ out of this bitch.” 

Despite the mask obscuring his face, Jack  _ fucking  _ Morrison - his new name, in McCree’s book - he could  _ feel _ the disapproving frown. 

He took another deep breath and decided to take the easy way out.

“Athena recognized you. Everythin’ ‘bout yer biometrics is in the system, from yer BMI to yer skeletal structure. There was  _ no way _ in Hell you were gettin’ in here unrecognized.” He jabbed a finger angrily at Jack. “And thinkin’ we’re dumb enough to fall fer something as simple as a fuckin’ mask over yer face is honestly an insult.” 

Jack, to his credit, seemed nonplussed. Less to his credit was the way he looked back over his shoulder - all the way to the horizon, and murmured with all the drama of an action hero in a summer blockbuster \- “My scars go deeper than that.”

McCree hit the button on his com, opening a line to Hanzo in case he accidentally punched “Soldier 76” in the face. He couldn’t even muster the tiniest hint of a smile when Hanzo responded immediately:  _ understood.  _

“We’ve all got scars. Hell, I’m  _ missing a fuckin’ arm here. _ ” He lifted his prosthetic in an angry motion to punctuate his statement. 

Jack had clearly forgotten how to disguise his body language in the years of wearing the visor. Surprise was written all over him. “That looks...bad.”

“You should know, since it happened  _ under your command.” _

“McCree.”

Jesse was  _ incredibly  _ grateful for Hanzo, sticking his head around the corner.

“Winston’s got everything arranged. There is paperwork to be signed, I expect.” Hanzo nodded respectfully to 76, but as soon as Jack grunted his approval and started down the hallway, Hanzo fell in step beside Jesse.

“He does not seem a very competent commander.” Hanzo said, under his breath. Jesse snorted.

“Darlin’, you got  _ no idea. _ ” McCree reached halfway into his pocket for a cigarillo, eyed Hanzo out of the corner of his eye, and decided against it. “‘Mutually-assured destruction,’” he said with the air of quoting someone - or some _ thing _ , as Hanzo was beginning to understand. “Might be the whole reason Overwatch fell apart.” 

Hanzo peered at him, nearly stopping in his surprise before catching up with McCree’s long-legged stride. “I see,” was all he was able to say before they ducked into the conference room after Soldier 76. Perhaps a little forebodingly, Athena very firmly closed the door behind them, close enough that it brushed the metal heel of Hanzo’s boot and tugged at the hem of his pants. 

Everyone else was already there, most of them lined up against the walls. The newer recruits were clustered together while the veterans stood with their arms crossed disapprovingly. On the other side of the table, Winston pushed up his glasses and in front of him, Hanzo could see the ridiculous pile of his “Welcome to Overwatch: Orientation Packet”. 

It didn’t matter how much anyone else protested that it  _ was so _ a legitimate orientation packet, it was just a series of photocopies of the cards, one small card per full-sized piece of paper, on the Rule Board. A crude hand (Hanzo was pretty sure it was a mix of Jesse and Lena’s chicken scratch) had scribbled on each paper the column that the card belonged to. 

“What is this?” Soldier 76 - the late Strike Commander Jack Morrison - asked dubiously, the intimidating red line of his visor sweeping across the room. Even if Hanzo’s past life hadn’t been filled with liars - good and bad - he wouldn’t have a difficult time realizing how terrible of a liar this 76 was. Glancing at the newer recruits, he could tell that they picked up on it to and their expressions varied from embarrassed (no doubt on 76’s account) to openly amused.

Seeing Jesse grinding his teeth as they circled the table to find a spot with their teammates against the wall, Hanzo gently nudged him with an elbow. Swallowing what he had wanted to say McCree nodded at him, once. 

“You know exactly what this is, Jack,” Ana said sternly. She folded her hands over her chest, her face one of grandmotherly disapproval. “This isn’t new to you.” 

Soldier 76’s visor swept the room again before resting on Ana for a few moments too long to not be hiding something. “My name is not Jack,” he said at last. 

“You are  _ the worst _ liar I have ever met,” Genji breathed, cradling his masked face in one of his hands as if disappointed. 

“ _ You’re one to talk _ ,” Hanzo couldn’t help but quip in Japanese as he and McCree passed him. 

“ _ Shut up,  _ anija _ , _ ” Genji shot back in the same language; McCree made a choking sound that may have been a tense kind of laugh. 

Soldier 76 looked around the room again. “Jack is not my name,” he repeated. “I prefer to be referred to by my code name, Soldier 76.” 

“And  _ we _ would prefer not to have this iteration of Overwatch go down in flames,” Winston interrupted. “ _ Again _ ,” he added pointedly, pushing his glasses up his simian nose with a finger. He huffed and adjusted himself so that both enormous hands were resting on the table in front of him. The WOOP packet was pushed toward Soldier 76. “We can play your game Jack - or, Soldier 76 - So long as you  _ sign the packet. _ ”

Obediently, Soldier 76 glanced down at the rather large pile of paper in front of him. The cover page was a crudely-drawn rendition of the Overwatch logo and a post-it note: 

_ These are the rules posted on the Rules Board,  _

_ which may be found in the common room. _

_ They are subject to change and Athena will  _

_ post updates as they are. _

“I have three papers for you to sign,” Winston continued, sliding two pieces of paper forward one by one. “One is that you have received and understand the Orientation Packet. The second is an NDA - I don’t need to explain what else it says, I don’t think...not to _ you _ .. The third is perhaps the most important of all -  _ especially for you _ .” 

Soldier 76 seemed to scowl - his shoulders rolled back, his hands clenched, and his head tipped down as if he were frustrated - and moved to the table. He signed without flourishes, his letters sharp and boxy: SOLDIER 76.

Winston huffed and held up the final piece of paper. Like the orientation packet, it was a single small card photocopied to a piece of paper, though this one was legal-sized. The rest of the page was filled in with signatures.  The card was decorated with a pixelated frame, something that had clearly been resized so many times that it was no longer a smooth line in neat calligraphy. Hanzo hadn’t dared to question why the frame was there as it seemed such an inconsequential and frivolous thing but if this Soldier 76 was as Jesse -  _ McCree _ \- said, then perhaps this was warranted, at least in this case.

“This is the most important page for you to sign,” Winston said seriously, an enormous finger tapping the paper pointedly. 

McCree huffed, unable to help himself. “It’s th’ most important  _ rule _ t’ follow -  _ unlike last time! _ ”

After casting a glare in Jesse’s direction, Soldier 76 leaned down and looked at the card. “Everyone save two operatives of the previous Overwatch team stationed at the Swiss base had signed,” Winston said. “While this probably isn’t the  _ only _ reason that Overwatch fell apart, it is something we would still like to bear in mind while we move forward.” 

“Taco Tuesday  _ wasn’t my fault _ ,” Soldier 76 snapped immediately and then flinched. 

McCree and Genji leaned forward very suddenly and Hanzo tried very hard not to stare at McCree’s ass and the way it was framed by his belt and chaps. “Yes it was,” Jesse hissed and Hanzo tried very hard to think of very unsexy things - like Torbjörn in a banana-hammock - and hope that no one noticed his reaction. 

“We don’t care about Taco Tuesday,” Winston interrupted. “We don’t care about the past except to ensure that we don’t repeat it. Now: do you agree to these terms? To this most important rule?” 

For a long moment Soldier 76’s visor swung around the room and he didn’t answer. Everyone, especially the old guard, stared back. There was no way to argue, not anymore and not with all of these newcomers that didn’t understand. 

He sighed and signed.

_ Mutually-assured destruction _


	6. Men Discussing Their Feelings In An Emotionally Healthy Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which mistakes are made

The Board had a long history that hadn’t ever been fully explained to Hanzo. As far as he could understand, it had started as a joke between Ana Amari, Gabriel Reyes, and Jack Morrison back when they were “just soldiers”. It was a game that they used to carry around with them on their longer trips, something silly just to pass the time. 

When they were promoted and permanently assigned to a Watchpoint, there was a shipping mishap where a good portion of their personal effects went missing. Most important - nearly more important than Ana’s favorite lacy lingerie - was an important half of the game. 

A few times they had considered tracking the package or even purchasing a completely new set but they didn’t bother. By then they had already found a new use for the cards. 

It started with the tagging. Names on the doors, sarcastic phrases, threats - some better received than others. But then...then there was The Card. The card that Jack Morrison would have scrubbed from the game back when it was still a game, would have torn it to pieces if he’d known. The very first rule - slammed up by Reinhardt so it was out of even Jack and Gabriel’s reach, underneath “RULES” written in sharpie on the wall.

_ Men discussing their feelings in an emotionally healthy way _

Hanzo, of course, knew exactly none of that. He walked in the footsteps of the old Watchpoint commander without realizing whose footsteps they were, and tried to jump the wall to get the card down. Not an inconsiderable feat considering his seemingly miraculous ability to scale a flat vertical wall.

Like Gabriel and Jack before him, he was promptly tranq-ed. 

He came to on the floor, Ana’s face looking down at him with an expression of motherly disapproval as she crouched over him. 

“Athena.”

“Yes, Ana?”

“Tell McCree we’ve got a Code White. Disciplinary room 1.”

“Yes Ma’am.”

 

Athena sounded downright smug. Ana shifted her attention back to Hanzo, offering him a hand. 

“I expected better from you.”

“I’m...very sorry.” He let her pull him upright, but she kept her steel grip on his arm and pulled him back down the hallway.

“Now, dear, you understand that -”

“I violated a rule. I will take whatever punishment you see fit.”

Ana looked genuinely startled, but she recovered quickly. “Good for your understanding. I’ll come get you in an hour.” she unlocked a door, threw him full force into the room, and locked it behind him.

He almost fell, unprepared for the toss, but warm hands caught him mid stumble. “Hey there archer. Fancy meetin’ you here.” 

Pushing himself away (though he desperately wanted to lean closer into McCree’s warmth), Hanzo looked around. He appeared to be in one of the rooms that his brother and Zenyatta had appropriated for their use in meditating. It was decorated tastefully in flat silk pillows arranged around a short table like the ones Hanzo was used to when he was growing up. Plates, cups, and covered dishes were arranged on the table.

The monk himself appeared at first to be meditating, floating above the ground in such perfect form that Hanzo was momentarily envious. Zenyatta’s orbs chimed as they spun in lazy orbit around him, shimmering with golden fires like miniature supernovas. “Welcome,” he said warmly. “I hope that you have come as I requested?”

McCree’s grin nearly split his face. “ _ With an open heart and an empty stomach _ ,” he said in a poor imitation of Zenyatta’s smooth voice.

“I didn’t ask to be here,” Hanzo muttered, brushing off imaginary dust from his clothes. “And did you steal that from  _ Iron Chef _ ?” he added, halfheartedly annoyed. Despite the wording and inflection, it wasn’t really a question but Zenyatta responded anyway. 

“Borrowed,” he corrected glibly and gestured to the spread in front of him. “From my understanding, this part of sharing is best done while eating as it promotes openness.”

With a bright laugh, McCree settled down on one of the brightly-colored cushions that Zenyatta gestured to. “I can get behind that, certainly. Already this is better than the other therapy sessions I had to go through.” Hanzo followed with more decorum, settling smoothly into  _ seiza _ and folding his hands primly over his thighs.

“Please,” Zenyatta said with an airy laugh. “Feel free to help yourself. I must admit as someone that doesn’t eat myself that I was not sure what should be prepared so I opted for a simple meal. I hope you can forgive me if it is not to your liking.” Unable to help themselves, McCree and Hanzo exchanged nervous glances as Zenyatta’s fingers tapped against the first metal cover in front of them.

“I’m sure it’ll be fine, Zen,” McCree assured the omnic quickly as he revealed the first plate.

Hot dogs.

For a while the two of them struggled to say anything, too honestly shocked to really make any noise. “Ball-park franks,” Zenyatta said glibly, ignoring or not noticing their stunned shock. “Genji was telling me a story about how he used to be terrified of octopus growing up so a chef made little octopi out of hot dogs and I thought it was just too cute.”

Hanzo and McCree traded glances again. In Spain, especially in their quiet area, these particular types of “sausage” were uncommon.

Very uncommon. 

Almost impossible to find in fact, and Hanzo knew this because McCree had complained about being unable to find them for an outdoor barbecue.

Their choices were simply that Zenyatta had miraculously managed to find American-style hot dogs in the area...but McCree had already scoured the greater Gibraltar area. In some ways this was unsurprising to Hanzo as Zenyatta seemed more than capable of miracles despite also knowing how determined McCree could be for even the tiniest details (look at the way the man dressed!). Another option was that Zenyatta had ordered them special which made it seem like a very odd choice to make; ordering it is one thing but using it for an impromptu group therapy session when something had been specially ordered made it…suspicious.

Which brought them to the conclusion that both could see in each other’s eyes: that Zenyatta had found it on their last mission in the United States and brought it back with him…nearly two months ago.

_ How long do these last? _ Hanzo mouthed to McCree as Zenyatta turned to reach for the plates.

McCree shrugged helplessly but plastered a very convincing smile on his face when Zenyatta handed him a plate. “Thanks partner,” he said cheerfully. “Don’t know  _ where _ ya managed to find ‘em – I’d been lookin’  _ everywhere _ fer these guys!”

If the omnic could smile, Hanzo was sure that Zenyatta would. He  _ seemed  _ pleased as well and Hanzo tried not to look as terrified as he felt. “These aren’t from around here, I’m afraid,” he said just as Hanzo feared he would. “I picked them up when we were cleaning up the Montana Watchpoint the other month.”

_ The other month _ . Like it hadn’t been  _ two _ .

Hanzo schooled his expression into neutrality when Zenyatta’s faceplate tipped toward him and accepted the plate that was handed to him with a nod of thanks. “We are certainly fortunate,” he said, hoping that his nervousness wasn’t evident in his voice. If Zenyatta noticed, he ignored it. “You have my thanks.”

“It is nothing,” Zenyatta assured them and reached for the next cover. “Though it was difficult to find hot dog buns here. I have condiments here as well,” he added as he gestured to the little bowls he revealed. It looked like he had sacrificed a tea set as the “bowls” were far too pretty to be much else.

“Thank you,” Hanzo said when McCree was uncharacteristically silent.

Zenyatta turned to set the cover aside and he elbowed McCree sharply in the ribs.

“Yeah!” McCree added belatedly, his eyes still fixated on the little collection of condiments. “Thank you that was…mighty kind o’ ya.”

“I know that conversations of this nature are uncomfortable,” Zenyatta said serenely, settling back into perfect meditative posture. “So I thought that I would attempt to decrease your discomfort.” He turned to McCree and tilted his head slightly. “I sense disquiet within you. Is everything alright, Jesse?”

McCree swallowed hard. “Yeah,” he said a little tersely, his voice a few notes higher than it should have. “Jus…jus peachy.” He reached for a hot dog bun and yanked his hand back when Hanzo’s fingers brushed his.

“My apologies,” Hanzo said, retreating. His skin crawled at the thought of eating but Zenyatta was so sincerely earnest that he felt even worse of a monster at the mere  _ thought _ of refusing his kind offer. He lifted the bowl of hot dogs – cooked, he was only a little reassured to see, grilled and still warm – to offer them to McCree.

The gunslinger nodded once in thanks and made a show of selecting one of them. They traded nervous glances again and mutual understanding passed between them: this  _ probably _ wouldn’t warrant a trip to see Mercy so they would probably both find a dark and abandoned corner of the base to suffer in silence. Hanzo solemnly selected his own before putting the bowl down and reaching for the condiments.

“Let us begin,” Zenyatta said as his orbs chimed soothingly. The circle of their orbit expanded to include Hanzo and McCree as well.

It made Hanzo feel like he was in the middle of a crude summoning circle.

(He resolved to not watch any more cheesy demon-summoning horror movies late at night with McCree but he knew that it was a resolution he was doomed to break. It was simply too tempting to lean into McCree’s shoulders at jump-scares, and to hold each other’s hands down so that when they were startled they didn’t accidentally destroy the TV with the nearest object on hand.

On that note, Hanzo learned that McCree’s hands were very warm and wonderfully calloused and those callouses caught delightfully against his own and dragged over his knuckles…he really needed to stop thinking about this.)

“We shall start with the purpose of this exercise,” Zenyatta continued, likely not noticing his distraction. “And the reason that I had been mutually agreed-upon as the mediator for your discussions.”

McCree glanced up from where he was carefully spooning ketchup on his hot dog. “We’re doing this  _ now _ ?” he asked as if surprised.

“What did you think we were doing?” Hanzo asked curiously as he reached for the sauerkraut.

“I don’t know,” McCree muttered, his eyes resting on the bowl in Hanzo’s hands. Hanzo offered it to him and he recoiled, shaking his head emphatically. “It’s just…why are… _ they _ here?”

In the corner, Bastion’s repair arm flipped up. “Boo-woo, boo-woo,” they chirped cheerfully in greeting. Their expressionless barrel swung idly between the three of them as if unsure of who to “look” at. Ganymede, perched on the rivets holding the barrels together, fluffed his feathers and chirped.

“Bastion wanted to participate,” Zenyatta said mildly. “We deemed it a little too difficult for them to be an effective mediator if neither of you did not already understand binary, but they wanted to assist in any way they may, regardless.”

To keep from saying anything snide, Hanzo took a big bite of his hot dog. “Uh…” Jesse said, glancing at Hanzo and then away quickly. “Okay…I…I guess.”

Bastion chirped a sound that might have meant “thank you”.

“Let’s begin, then,” Zenyatta said, folding his hands in front of him. “Why are you here today?”

Hanzo grimaced, putting his hot dog back on his plate. McCree just held up the photocopied sheet from his orientation packet - the offending card.  _ Men discussing their feelings in an emotionally healthy way. _

“So I take it there are some…unresolved feelings within the two of you,” Zenyatta said mildly. “Likely why you were…ah… _ volunteered _ for peer-mandated therapy with a mediator.”

Still chewing his bite of hot dog, Hanzo nearly choked.  _ Volunteered?  _ He wanted to demand.

“Hold up now,” McCree said, gesturing ridiculously with his hot dog. A drop of ketchup landed on his jeans and licking his thumb, he wiped it away. “ _ Volunteered? _ ”

Bastion let out a long stream of beeps and chirps. “Indeed,” Zenyatta said mildly when they were done. “Bastion says that multiple concerned parties came forward with concerns regarding your…interpersonal relationships. For the sake of team cohesion – and the survival of your brother for which I am obviously concerned – we cannot reveal their identity or identities.”

This time it was McCree’s turn to choke and if Zenyatta noticed his slip, he did not show it.

“Right,” Hanzo said dubiously and if he considered attempting fratricide for (at least) a second time, he likewise didn’t show it. McCree was ready to assist if necessary.

(Not that Hanzo  _ needed _ the help, but it gave Jesse the opportunity to ogle the play of sweat and blood on Hanzo’s muscles…Lord above there was something wrong with him.)

“The rule was put into place in light of the…situation that arose from the arrival of our newest recruit.” McCree snorted at that but didn’t interrupt, inelegantly wiping another smear of ketchup from his mouth with the back of his hand. “So in the light of promoting further… _ cohesion _ amongst ourselves in our interpersonal relationships, do you have anything you wish to discuss in this neutral environment?”

Hanzo took another bite of his hot dog, lifting a hand to catch a bit of sauerkraut before it could fall on his lap. He chewed and swallowed, popping the blob of condiment caught on the back of his hand into his mouth. Seeing that McCree wasn’t about to answer – was actively looking away from him, hunching into himself as if to avoid looking at him, he sighed.

“I…I am not good at expressing myself,” Hanzo said, fiddling with the edges of the plate in his hands. “That much is obvious and considering that we had been… _ volunteered _ , I suppose it should be obvious what this discussion should be about.”

Zenyatta’s orbs bounced and Ganymede chirped. “Speak freely,” he urged gently. “The path to peace is through openness with yourself.”

“A part of me is ashamed of my feelings,” Hanzo said to his plate. “But that is the part of me that is still bound by the expectations of the Shimada Clan. Another part of me is afraid…of what may happen. Of what this…of how my… _ feelings _ may affect me in the field. I’m afraid of putting my team in danger because I am so focused on…something else. On watching some _ one _ else almost exclusively.”

McCree put his plate down with a heavy sigh and Zenyatta produced a teapot and teacup – from where neither of them were sure – and poured him a drink which he accepted tiredly. “It ain’t gonna work, I’mma tell y’ that right now,” he said grimly. “I jus’…I can’ trust ‘im like that. Not after what happened.”

At his side, Hanzo flinched, curling slightly inward. “What are your thoughts on this, Hanzo?” Zenyatta asked gently and one of the orbs circling them changed course to swirl around the archer.

“I don’t blame him,” Hanzo murmured bleakly. “After…everything that’s happened it’s…understandable.”

Zenyatta hummed neutrally and Bastion’s turret swung back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match. Eventually Ganymede grew frustrated with the motion and fluttered to perch in the windowsill. She pecked at a little saucer of dried fruit that Zenyatta had set out.

“And where do your trust issues lie, Jesse?” Zenyatta asked serenely.

McCree barked a rough laugh that made Hanzo flinch. “Ya  _ need _ t’ ask? Why would I wanna make nice with a  _ murderer _ ?” Hanzo flinched again and curled a little tighter. “More than that,” McCree grumbled, clenching his fists in his lap. “ _ Why _ would I want t’ interact with someone I  _ clearly _ can’t trust? D’ ya  _ know _ his past? What he’s done? What he’s responsible for?”

There was a heavy silence as McCree stopped speaking, huffing. He threw his tea back like a shot and shoved his hot dog in his mouth as if to keep from speaking. 

But McCree was evidently not done twisting that particular knife in Hanzo’s side, because he kept on.

“His emotional issues killed  _ a lot _ of people.”

Hanzo winced. Only one that mattered. And hadn’t - killed. Yet another thing he failed at.

“He’s betrayed the only person who ever loved him. He leaves a trail of disaster in his goddamn wake and I’m not ready t’ stand in th’ way anymore and let ‘im run me over.” McCree huffed and ran a hand through his hair, turning his head away from Hanzo and Zenyatta. “The long an’ the short of it is...I don’t trust him to run unchecked.”

Zenyatta hummed gently. “Don’t you think you should consider giving him a chance?”

McCree mumbled like the grumpy old man he secretly was. “Give him a  _ chance _ ? That ain’t happening. Not gonna work, partner. He’s  _ had _ chances before - more than one. Why is  _ now _ any different than-”

“Perhaps you’re being unfair,” Zenyatta interrupted gently as Bastion made a few loud beeps in distress. “You can only move forward from your past. Should you not respect him now for all the progress that he has made?”

“There may have once been respect there, but after hearin’ his thoughts? Nope,” he growled, slamming a fist on the table hard enough to make the plates clatter. “Ain’t nothin’ there no more. Ain’t gonna  _ be _ nothin’ there, not if  _ I _ have any say in it.”

For a long moment there was a heavy silence in the room. “Tell me your thoughts, my friend,” Zenyatta murmured to Bastion. They rolled their barrel between Hanzo and Jesse and let out a long stream of beeps, chirps, and whistles, punctuated by loud peeps from Ganymede who returned to perch on Bastion’s turret. “I thought so as well.” He turned back to Hanzo and Jesse and steepled his fingers in front of him. “For the sake of openness, I would like to bring up the subject of our discussion.” He turned to Hanzo. “Hanzo: I would like you to elaborate your feelings on this matter.”

“I do not see the point,” Hanzo spat bitterly, not looking up. His hands clenched in his lap. “Not when McCree has made known his feelings for me.”

McCree spun and groaned when something pulled in his back. “I’m sorry, what now?”

“Ah,” Zenyatta said as if he were talking about a flower in the gardens. “As we suspected: you were both having a different conversation.”

Hanzo moved to get to his feet but McCree lunged across the space between them, one of Zenyatta’s orbs clinging to his shadow, to grab the hem of Hanzo’s shirt. “Wait! Han!” He stood no chance, and he knew it when Hanzo pulled lose in a single brutal motion.

“Goodbye, McCree.”

“Han-”

Hanzo glared him down, shoving open the window and then diving out. 

When Jesse turned to look at Bastion, they let loose another long tirade of beeps, whistles, and chirps. “I suggest chasing after him,” Zenyatta said. “It would do good to explain yourself. Be specific about what you’re talking about, as well.” He patted McCree on the shoulder, looking out the window after Hanzo. “Follow your heart.”

McCree hesitated, then steeled his expression. “You’re right.”

If Zenyatta were capable of it, he would frown. He didn’t like the look that the gunslinger wore - it reminded him too much of Genji moments before he was about to do something. “Um, Jesse-?”

Jesse was going towards the window, sitting on the ledge. “Well, here I go.”

“McCree-”

He jumped. 

Zenyatta let out a trill - a rough approximation of a sigh - as he heard an audible  _ crack.  _ From somewhere beneath the window, Jesse yowled.

“He  _ could _ have followed his heart out the door.”

Bastion trilled and spun their turret in amusement, dislodging Ganymede from her perch. They made a sound like a laugh.

“Yes,” Zenyatta agreed airily as his orbs resumed their orbit around him. Ganymede fluttered over and landed on one of them, spinning and bobbing slowly through the air as if riding an amusement park ride. “I think that this was a very good idea and it is very nice timing as the end-date for our bet is coming up soon.”

Bastion laughed again. They trilled and chirped at Zenyatta.

Standing, the omnic began clearing the plates left behind by Hanzo and McCree, tucking their half-eaten food into the mini-fridge in the corner, wondering out loud to Bastion if they would want the rest of their hot dogs. He set out new plates, refilled the condiment bowls, and tucked them back under their covers.

“On to our next problem then, shall we?” Zenyatta asked rhetorically though he still waited for Bastion’s turret to nod in agreement. “I doubt that our presence will be strictly necessary for the discussion between Ana and Soldier 76, but it should be entertaining as she told me that she wanted to discuss the  _ real _ reason for the fall of Overwatch.”

Bastion whistled, interested, and Zenyatta com-ed Ana that they were ready for their next victims.

 

-*-*-*-*-*

Though he often pretended to be, Jesse McCree was  _ not _ dumb. A former Blackwatch operative, never mind where he came from before that, couldn’t  _ afford _ to be. A dumb operative was a dead one in the game of covert operations and Jesse had been among the best.

Still, he  _ felt _ it now as he chased after Hanzo.

(It was that or the feeling of the muscle he pulled in his back wrenching around after realizing that Hanzo thought that he was speaking so ill of  _ him! _ Of Hanzo! As if he didn’t spend most of his waking hours – and many of his sleeping ones – chasing after him. As if he didn’t flirt with Hanzo at every possible moment, as if he didn’t go out of his way to spend more time with him and him alone.

As if he didn’t watch horror movies with him late at night just so he could hold him and be held in turn as they jumped at predictable jump scares. As if he didn’t spend those movies with his fingers tangled with Hanzo’s to keep the both of them from reacting poorly and destroying the TV.)

Of course, it also could have been his leg. He was almost certain he’d broken  _ something.  _ It only remained to be seen exactly what. 

Regardless, McCree knew that the only reason he could still  _ see _ Hanzo was because Hanzo let him. The man could be a damned shadow when he put his mind to it, and about as invisible as the wind.

Worse in many ways was knowing that Hanzo hid in such an obvious place – in a place where only someone that could free climb a goddamn sheer wall or one that could fly could reach him. It was that or shout and he knew – they  _ both _ knew – how they valued their privacy, both as individuals and as a pair.

“Han!” he called helplessly at the edge of the cliff, craning his head to see the barest hint of Hanzo’s topknot, the slightest flash of his golden ribbon. “Please just…hear me out.”

Sensing eyes on him, he turned to see Mercy sitting on a lawn chair, her legs crossed at the knee, eating a bowl of berries as she watched. Lena sat beside her, a bag of potatoes on one side and a bucket for the peels she was shaving. Seeing him looking, she waved.

A moment later, the doors to the base proper slammed open and Hana tumbled out, her arms full of bags of chips. “ _ Did I miss it? _ ” she demanded.

“No, you’re just in time,” Angela assured her. “Though I would prefer that you eat something  _ healthier _ than that.”

Rolling her eyes, Hana flopped down on the grass next to Lena, losing some of her bags of chips in the process. “ _ Puh-leeese _ ,” she huffed teasingly. “They’re vegetarian! Or maybe vegan…I’m not sure.”

“New sponsor?” Genji asked, dropping down from another level. “Did I miss anything?”

“No, it’s just starting,” Lena assured him.

McCree propped his fists on his hips, doing his damndest not to wince as it sent a little shockwave through the bone in his leg. “Excuse me?”

“You don’t own me,” Hana told him pertly.

“You can’t stop us from meeting in the public areas of the base,” Angela reminded him smugly, popping a blueberry in her mouth. “Besides, it's too hot indoors and Torbjörn hasn't fixed the AC systems yet.”

Reluctantly deciding to ignore them, McCree turned his attention back to Hanzo. “Darlin’,” he called up, hoping that his nervousness wasn’t obvious. “Han...Hanzo.” There was no response. “You gonna make me say this here? In front’a everyone? ‘Cos I’ll do it.”

If Hanzo said anything, it was carried away by the brisk sea breeze. McCree could see him now, just his head and shoulders but now it was obvious, at least to those on the ground, that he was watching Jesse. 

McCree swallowed and scrubbed his hands on his thighs even though only one of them really sweat anymore. “Hanzo, I didn’t...I didn’t mean ta say all of those things. Well, I  _ did _ , but…”

“Wow,” he heard Hana mutter behind him. Lena shushed her impatiently. 

Squaring his shoulders, McCree looked down for a moment to gather his thoughts before looking up at Hanzo’s lofty perch. “I did. I meant all of those things, but they weren’t meant toward you -  _ never _ toward you.” He licked his dry lips nervously. “I...I’m sweet on ya, ‘kay? Always had been, even when y’ first joined an’ I wanted t’ hate yer guts. An’ then...I just...look, this ain’t gonna be some...I was afraid. I was afraid that you’d just look at me an’...an’ laugh.” he looked down, clenching his fists to keep from shaking. “The things I said...they’d never apply t’ ya. At least...not anymore. Jus...Han...lemme talk to ya, face t’ face. Without an audience.”

Behind him, he could hear Mercy and Genji groan as if deprived of their entertainment. 

With his heart in his throat, McCree watched as Hanzo seemed to think that over and very slowly climbed down. He stopped just out of McCree’s reach. 

“Darlin’,” he breathed quieter and watched the blush rise in the archer’s cheeks. Afraid of his reaction, Jesse took a bold step forward into Hanzo’s space. “I trust you more than you know. I’d trust you with...with everythin’. Especially…” he licked his lips nervously and swallowed around a dry throat. “Especially...my heart.” 

Hanzo blinked at him, a warm blush staining his cheeks. “Foolish man,” he muttered and for a moment McCree was terrified that he was about to be shoved away. Instead Hanzo fisted his hands in McCree’s flannel shirt and yanked him down for a kiss. 

*--*-*-*

“Aw, fuck my eyes!” Genji howled somewhere behind them as McCree yanked Hanzo closer. “ _ I did not sign up for this! _ ”

They pulled away for a moment, their noses brushing as they caught their breath. “No offense darlin’,” McCree murmured. “But I think I might kill yer brother. For real this time.”

“If you wouldn’t hold it against me, I would help you,” Hanzo murmured back. 

McCree offered him a rumbling chuckle and a hot kiss. “I’d much rather hold somethin’  _ else _ against ya.” 

They parted briefly, splitting only far enough for McCree to see the wicked smirk on Hanzo’s lips. “Fratricide now,” he said loud enough for their audience to hear. He fingered the curls of McCree’s chest hair that peeked out of the open buttons of his flannel. “My place later?”

“Fuck,” Genji breathed and they could hear metal scraping as he scrambled away. 

McCree gave a throaty laugh. “Darlin’,” he breathed. His right eye shimmered with a pinprick of hellish light. “You have th’  _ best _ ideas.”


	7. Fear Itself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a bit of a shorter interlude in our lovely "MAD" arc ft. unexpected sources of mental trauma and lots of glitter

Living with another person had a lot of different elements that Hanzo was unprepared for.

He hadn’t really _meant_ to move in with Jesse, but nights seemed to stretch into mornings and mornings to evenings, and the space picked up more of his things, became _theirs_ and not just his. He had never shared space like this before, never been willing to be this private with someone. If he was honest with himself (he rarely was) it was terrifying and wonderful in equal proportion.

But McCree waking up in the middle of the night screaming was starting to tip the scales.

Nightmares- Nightmares were fine, he understood nightmares, he had plenty of them. The usual fare, his regrets, battles, losing Jesse, Genji, Genji over and over and over. Sometimes he woke up yelling for him, and sometimes Jesse had to go and get him before he’d calm down.

But at least he’d never woken up screaming the names of foods.

It was sometime after the- lord, it had to have been somewhere around the 100th sauerkraut dream when Hanzo woke up to find Jesse’s side of the bed empty, the door open. And there was a line, there was only so much a man could be expected to endure, and by God, Jesse was going to get the hell back in bed. Hanzo stormed out to the hallway to haul his wayward lover back by his _ear_ if necessary, but his anger lost a bit of its force when he caught side of Jesse in the hallway.

Jesse hadn’t slept much this week, and it was starting to show. He was ragged around the edges, his hands not as steady as they usually were. He’d missed more in simulations, taken two shots to bring down enemies that would have normally taken one.

And it showed now, in the steady stream of glitter falling to the ground as McCree painted it on top of one of the cards on the rules wall. There was a twinkle in the corner of his Hanzo’s eye, and he looked to the banned board next to the door.

“Mutually Assured Destruction” was glimmering like christmas day. Hanzo took a moment to look over Jesse’s shoulder as he painted with an unsteady hand.

"Really?” Hanzo rubbed his eyes, trying not to let too much irritation creep into his voice. "Authentic Mexican Cuisine?"

McCree, too his credit, didn’t seem surprised that Hanzo was behind him. "You...you don't understand." he mumbled, still jerkily adding layers of glitter.  
"Does it have anything to do with sauerkraut?" Hanzo asked dryly. "You were having a nightmare again."

McCree shuddered. "DON'T SAY THAT WORD," he hissed.

Surprised, Hanzo narrowed his eyes at McCree. “What’s wrong with it?”

“You jus’...don’t understand,” McCree muttered.

Sighing, Hanzo walked up and wrapped his arms around McCree’s waist. “Come back to bed?” he asked the warm space between McCree’s shoulder blades. He kissed the bit of flesh he could reach above McCree’s collar. “Please?”

McCree’s shoulders slumped. “Jus’...jus’ a sec, darlin’.”

When the gunslinger still struggled with the glitter and cards, Hanzo stepped in to help him and pin them back in their proper places. McCree slept better that night, tucking his face into the crook of Hanzo’s neck as if to hide from the dark memories.

Hanzo stayed up a few minutes later, thinking as he idly brushed his fingers through McCree’s unruly hair.

\----

Unfortunately, further questioning had to wait as by the time McCree was beginning to stir from his sleep, Winston and Athena called them both for a mission with Soldier 76.

The mission itself had gone off with relative ease and no major issues on their end. Still, Hanzo was a huge mess of nerves with the idea that McCree may get hurt from his lack of sleep and focus.

But McCree pulled through without major injury. From the way he limped he may have pulled a muscle or strained something, but it didn’t seem like a major concern. McCree seemed to be similarly concerned because he pushed Hanzo into one of the small changing rooms on the _Orca_ and conducted a _very thorough_ examination of the archer.

By the time they had changed out of their battle gear and treated the various bruises and scratches on their person as needed, they were still hours away from Gibraltar. Unsurprisingly McCree nodded off right away, his head pillowed on one of Hanzo’s shoulders.

Hanzo lay awake, too jittery from leftover adrenaline to rest and hyperaware of the sticky line of drool that was tracing the edge of his collarbone. Across the aisle from them, Soldier 76 had listed sideways in his jump seat and if it wasn’t for the faint sounds of snoring coming from beneath the mask, Hanzo wouldn’t have been able to guess that he was asleep.

 

On his shoulder, McCree grunted and gave an involuntary twitch. “No,” he mumbled, his voice distorted by sleep and the way he lay his head, which mashed his lips into Hanzo’s shoulder. “No masa.”

Unable to help himself, Hanzo smiled. “No masa?” he echoed.

“Masa makes tortillas,” Jesse mumbled as if answering Hanzo. Most likely he was continuing the thought his dream self was having.

To Hanzo’s surprise, Soldier 76 grunted across the aisle. “Reinhardt’s cooking.” He spoke in his sleep the way he spoke when awake: explosively and gruffly as if trying to shove his words out of his mouth.

McCree mumbled, shifting to get more comfortable against Hanzo’s shoulders. He was sure to pull something and wake up uncomfortable from the weird, contorted way he was sleeping but Hanzo figured it was better to let him sleep and work out the kinks in his back and neck later, in the privacy of their room.

Who knows where the massage would take them?

“But we’re having tacos,” McCree mumbled.

Soldier 76 grunted and Hanzo realized then that they were _talking to each other in their sleep_. “Reinhardt’s making tacos.” Moving slowly so as to not wake Jesse, he pulled out his com and started recording.

“But no tortillas,” McCree grunted back.

Never before had the struggle not to laugh been so difficult.

“Reinhardt’s making tacos,” Soldier 76 repeated.

“No tortillas.”

“Not sauerkraut,” Soldier 76 grumbled.

In unison, as if by some unseen and mutual horror, both of them gave full-bodied shudders. McCree almost flopped off of Hanzo’s shoulder and he rushed to stabilize him so that he wouldn’t fall and wake up.

Still, it was food for thought - pun _not_ intended. Clearly McCree had _some_ sort of issue with sauerkraut but he had never wanted to elaborate on _why_. Clearly it wasn’t the idea of fermented cabbage alone as he very much loved kimchee and would make very odd concoctions of fried rice and omelettes with the stuff with Hana.

“No,” McCree mumbled sleepily. “Nooo, Reinhardt.”

 _It was like watching an action movie in slow-motion,_ Hanzo mused as he continued to record. The two of them, still deeply asleep, begged some invisible entity - or perhaps a past version of Reinhardt not to make...sauerkraut tacos?

Hanzo wondered how much of this was from the...oddity of dreams and how much was based on fact.

“Noooo,” Soldier 76 groaned as well. “That’s not how you make tortillas.”

Very slowly Hanzo lowered his phone. _What?_

  



	8. Old People Smell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ....like burned saurkraut and regret

“Hanzo?” McCree asked as the archer picked at his meal, memories of saurkraut still fresh in his mind.

The other man looked up. “Yes?”

“When...we were with Zenyatta…” they both paused to shudder at the thought of the hot dogs though Jesse looked a little paler around his lips than Hanzo did. “Why were ya defending him?”

Hanzo blinked. “Defending who?”

“Jack,” McCree clarified. “Soldier 76.”

The archer frowned. “Defending him? When did I do that?”

This time it was McCree’s turn to frown. He sat up a little straighter. “When we were talkin’ with Zen.”

Hanzo’s eyes narrowed and McCree could see the gears turning in his head. “You said you couldn’t trust…‘him’. You were talking about Commander Morrison.”

“He ain’t no commander o’ mine,” McCree snapped, unable to help himself.

Leaning back, Hanzo considered Jesse, drumming his fingers lightly on the table. They both turned to look at Hana. “Oh,” she said a little too-innocently. “Don’t mind me.” Her com was flipped up toward them.

Across from her, Lena popped a piece of chocolate in her mouth. “Yeah, love,” she said. “What’s your problem with Jack?”

“In case you haven’t forgotten, _he’s_ the reason for the end of the first Overwatch,” McCree snapped, slapping both hands on the table.

The other inhabitants of the cafeteria, previously pretending to not listen in on their conversation, all turned their heads toward Jesse. “Now that’s not fair and you know it,” Lena argued. “You can’t just pin the blame on him!”

Lucio held up his hands in a T-shape. “Whoa, hold up, time out!” he said, standing and walking over to their table. He slid into place next to Hana who elbowed him playfully in the side. “I just heard there was a terrorist attack on the Swiss base. You tellin’ me it _wasn’t_?”

Sneering, McCree looked like he was about to spit but thought better of it at the last minute. “Naw,” he muttered. “Different kind o’ ‘terror’ if ya know what I mean.”

“You weren’t even _there!_ ” Lena protested hotly.

Hana nudged Lucio with her elbow again and pushed the com - obviously recording them - into his hands. From another pocket she pulled out another mobile device, probably a personal one, and set up the recording. Lucio played it off admirably, curling his fingers to magnify the sound and turning to Lena with his eyebrows up, the very picture of innocence.

“So if you were there - what did happen?”

Lena opened her mouth - then snapped it shut again, looking disgruntled.

“Well if this is about....the doctrine of mutually assured destruction, I think maybe Jesse can start. Whattya say, Jess? I’ll take over from where you left.”

Jesse tried not to look too smug, and ultimately failed. Lena sighed.

“Athena, keep us both on the record?”

Athena let out a soft ring to indicate that the message had been received, then cut in.

_Would you like me to tell the parts of the story I was privy to?_

For a moment, everyone froze, looking at the tiny blue light that was Athena’s ‘eye’ in the room. Hana broke first.

“You can... _do that?_ ”

_Not under normal circumstances. But all personal information occurred in the common areas of the base or was conducted between two people who are both legally dead, and so not entitled to privacy protections within their own organization._

“Oh. Well- you can lead, then.”

_______

Jack was whistling to himself as he walked down the hallway, his arms full of fliers for taco Tuesday. He had a good feeling about this. He had a-

Gabriel was coming down the hallway towards him. He looked pissed. Even for Gabriel. That- that was probably not good. He had a bad feeling he knew why.

“MORRISON.” Gabriel _roared._ Jack winced. Ah. Yeah. He was definitely pissed. He only called him Morrison when he was pissed.

“Gabe-”

“YOUR OFFICE OR MINE, NOW.”

“-Gabriel-” Gabe grabbed him by the collar on the way by, and straight up hauled him down the hallway and into an empty conference room, slamming the door behind him and rounding on Jack.  
“I should have godddamn known it was you- Tracer has too much damn self preservation to go for that card without your say so. I just didn’t know why. So _WHY,_ Jackie? Why did you encourage a subordinate to fuck with official property? Why did you-”

Gabriel spotted the fliers.

Jack realized a second later what Gabriel was about to do- they were always in sync after all- and pulled backwards as Gabriel lunged. Less fortunately for Jack- he’d forgotten the chairs in the conference room had wheels, and went down hard after trying to lean on one. Paper went everywhere. Before Jack could stop him he grabbed one off the ground and looked at it.

It went deathly silent. Jack could feel his heart beating in his ears. Gabriel looked up at him, finally, real betrayal in his eyes.

“No.”

“It’s just- It’s just a team bonding activity! They used to have it in my old high school-”

“Your old high school in _buttfuck Indiana, Jack_??? Did you even think for a minute about how this might be kind of shitty??”

Jack stopped. He looked at the flier. He took a deep breath, and Gabriel held up a hand.

“No, no no. Don’t. We’re not talking about this. We’re talking about how _Authentic Mexican food_ was a RULE. We let Lena get away with her fish and chips, you’ve let Reinhardt half poison all of us, Torbjorn, Ana, you’ve let them all have their food. And I put it on the fucking _board_ not even because I didn’t trust you, but because if I had to eat McCree’s shitty ass imitation of his mother’s enchiladas one more goddamn time I was going to have to send him back to max. I _trusted you._ And now Reinhardt is in the kitchen making _TACO SHELLS FROM SAUERKRAUT.”_

Jack had his rebuttal half formed. It chased away from him.

“He _what.”_

_______

 

“He WHAT.” Hana couldn’t help but cut in, gaping in horror.

McCree grimaced, arms crossed on his chest as he listened to Athena’s account.

“I think that’s my cue”

_______

 

McCree had caught up with Gabriel in the hall, following his nose to the source of the fumes.

“Boss, what’s-”

“Jack’s betrayed us.”

“What-”

Gabriel shoved the flier into his hands, and McCree got an eyeful of cartoon tacos and comic sans.

“Is this why the whole base smells like burning soap?”

“Reinhardt.” Gabriel choked out.

McCree paled. “No.”

“Sauerkraut Taco Shells.”

“ _No.”_

“This has gone too far, and Jack gave them the reason to do it. This is it. This is war. This cannot be forgiven.”

“-Boss, okay, that’s horrific, but don’t you think that’s a bit extre-”  
“WAR, JESSE.”

Jesse finally stopped, letting Gabriel steamroll down the hallway ahead of him. Gotta stop this. Gotta do- Gotta do something. Something glinted in the corner of his eye. He looked up.

  
The banned board hung in all its glory above him. Lots of cards. Lots of- although McCree hated to admit it- good, common sense rules.

 

Maybe there was someone that could help him.

___

 

McCree trailed off, much to everyone’s frustration.

“And then what? Who could help you??” Hana was on the edge of her seat. Even Lena looked curious.  
“You never told me about this part, love.”

“Not sure if this is my story to tell.”

“Oh come on-”

 

“You should tell them, Jesse.”

Everyone jumped like a bunch of guilty kids, looking at the doorway. McCree didn’t look surprised, only more grim.

“Suppose that’s your call, ma’am.”

 

Ana grinned.

“It’s old news, by now.”

_______

McCree had gone up to the roof and and tapped a morse code out into the transmitter Ana had left paved into the wall. In a moment, he got a reply.

 

_Wooden chest in Reinhardt’s room_

 

McCree stared at that message for a long moment before tapping one back.

_What if he’s there_

 

_He won’t be._

Dubious as those instructions were, McCree did as instructed. Sure enough, Reinhardt’s room was abandoned- it looked like it had been empty for months, and there was enough of Ana’s stuff around that McCree had an inkling as to why.

He focused his attention on the chest at the end of the bed- a huge wooden monstrosity carved with sigils. He opened it-

____

 

“And he came sprinting right back up to the roof in a panic, because that was the chest with all the-”

“YES, Ana, thank you, it was the _wrong chest_.”

____

He opened the _other_ chest, and there they were in all their shining glory: the white cards. It was almost a power trip just looking at them: wondering how far he could go before they stopped being followed.

But no- he reminded himself- he was doing the right thing, for once. The right thing. And then he was going to run for his goddamn life before both Gabe and Jack tried to use him as a decorative carpet. So he looked for something that would help, the card Ana had mentioned offhand years ago that they should have put on the banned board from the day the board began. The most important thing.

_Mutually assured destruction._

_____

Lena sighed. “No need to be so dramatic love, it wasn’t all that.”

McCee jabbed a finger at her.

“ _Was so_. And if you hadn’t agreed with me you wouldn’t have agreed to make everyone sign it.”

 

“Well,” Ana quipped, settling on the arm of the couch next to Hana, “ _Almost_ everyone.”

Hana’s eyes went wide. “Is that what you guys were talking about when Soldier showed up? He didn’t sign it?”

Ana patted her absently on the head. “He didn’t, but it takes two to have a furious ideological arms race.”

 

Lucio cut in, on the edge of his seat- “So are the rumors true, then? Gabriel Reyes bombed the base?”

“Ye-”

“No-”

Lena and McCree looked at each other accusingly. Overhead, Athena hummed.

“That is technically correct, Agent Santos, for definitions of “bombed” that involve the purposeful or accidental detonation of explosive material, airborne or otherwise.”

McCree relaxed back into his seat.

“Yeah.” He muttered, “that.”

“Accidental?” Hana echoed, dumbfounded.

 

“Athena dear,” Ana cut in when it became clear that neither Lena nor McCree wanted to say any more, “please describe the events of Thanksgiving Day 2068.”

_______

 

Much as Jack was all stars and stripes, neither he nor Gabriel were particularly _proud_ of America, and certainly not of its legacy. But some things had to be maintained, and if Jack didn’t send a picture of Thanksgiving dinner home to his mother every year she’d show up and make them all one herself. That prospect scared even Gabriel into helping, and usually it was a pretty relaxed event. Things were better between them when they had a common enemy. Downright friendly. Downright...more than friendly, sometimes. Thanksgiving was theirs.

 

Thanksgiving morning smelled like sauerkraut and tears.

 

Gabriel had had enough. Sure, he hadn’t signed that stupid card, wouldn’t give Jack the satisfaction of caving first. But Jesse was gone, and Genji was gone, and Ana was gone, and bits of him were turning to smoke and floating away, and all he goddamn had was Jack now and he was going to make the MOST OF IT.

 

So he broke out the flamethrower.

 

As it happened, no one stands in the way of Gabriel Reyes heading towards the kitchen with a flamethrower and a grim glint in his eye. But it's much harder to notice the smell of rotten eggs when they’re buried under several layers of burned crap and sauerkraut. So no one stopped Gabe.

And Gabe had some headphones in blasting angry metal music he’d custom made to block out Athena, and certainly wasn’t listening to her yelling about the gas leak.

 

She’d gotten Jack.

Jack had thrown himself in the doorway, yelling at Gabe to stop right as he hit the trigger.

____

They all sat in the silence of that finale for a while, Hana quietly turning her recording off and settling back in the armchair.

 

“...Is that why old people smell is on the banned board?” Lucio managed.

 


	9. Bonus: Prey

[1 Unread Message]

Since the only ones that really sent her direct messages tended to instead yell at her across the safehouse, she was intrigued.

**From: D.Va**

**_Hola Azúcarina! Thought you might find this a little interesting!_ **

**_Keep it on the DL though, since I’m not sure people are supposed to know about this (yet?). But it seems right up your alley._ **

**_Love, D.Va ;)_ **

Sombra couldn’t help but smile. Ah, D.Va. They had been playing video games together for the past year or so. If D.Va, real name Hana Song, knew that Sombra was the sole entity behind what authorities were calling the “Sombra Collective” she gave no sign of it, just as Sombra didn’t once mention the new Overwatch.

Situating the stuffed bear that D.Va had sent her as a prize in her lap, Sombra queued up the video. “ _Ay,_ ” she sighed when McCree’s hairy mug came on the screen in front of her. “ _Pobrecito_.”

An instant message popped up from D.Va which she queued up beside the video. McCree’s whining was commonplace to her already.

 **D.Va:** _annyeong!_

Sombra smiled and sent a message back.

 **Azúcarina:** _hola!_  
**D.Va:** are you watching the video?  
**D.Va:** jesse’s being a grump so you can skip most of the beginning but there’s a cool bit about the fall of overwatch  
**D.Va:** you’ll like it, i promise  
**Azúcarina:** jesse is still complaining  
**D.Va:** he and Hanzo got together btw

Did they now? Sombra grinned to herself and made a mental note - which appeared on a separate screen - to look into that later.

 **Azúcarina:** ooh, looks like it’s getting good  
**D.Va:** it’s weird is what it is

Sombra listened, toying with the purple screens in front of her as the AI began her account of the events. She recoiled when they mentioned _sauerkraut_.

Sauerkraut _taco shells_.

Her fingers hovered over the keypads nervously, almost afraid of what she may find if she searched further. Instead she brought up the chat again.

 **Azúcarina:** sauerkraut tacos???  
**D.Va:** yuck right?  
**D.Va:** apparently that’s what led to the bombing of the swiss base  
**Azúcarina:** seriously???  
**D.Va:** yup.  
**D.Va:** keep watching. they talk about it more  
**D.Va:** woe tanksgiving 2068  
**D.Va:** *thanksgiving

Sombra’s fingers twitched and she moved the chat and the video aside. In the new window she opened, she accessed the old Overwatch servers and brought up the security footage for Thanksgiving 2068.

“I _know_ it’s a bad idea,” she muttered to her stuffed bear. “But...I need to know. _Aha!_ ” She enlarged the grainy security footage and muted the video that Hana had sent her.

Reinhardt was an enormous blob on the screen as he bounced through the kitchen. If she didn’t know better, she’d be excited to see what he did but somehow she was still surprised when she saw him pull out an enormous jar of homemade sauerkraut.

She watched as he mixed it with flour and flattened the mixture with a rolling pin.

She watched him throw it on the flat top.

Immediately everyone bowed away from it as if a chemical bomb had gone off. Their cries of horror were audible in their mind but otherwise lost to time as they scrambled away.

Finding herself frozen, she could only watch in mute horror as Reinhardt continued on, flipping the fried sauerkraut as though it were a pancake. She could almost hear the jaunty tune that he was no doubt humming to himself as he went about his work - cutting up a block of steak that looked already cooked and seasoned, courtesy of Gabe no doubt, and tossed it back on the stove to reheat it.

She watched him turn the heat up even higher and watched as the beautiful cuts of steak dried out and blackened beneath the heat.

Even in the grainy video of the security feed she could almost _see_ the noxious fumes of hte sauerkraut rising from the stove.

Movement caught her eye in an otherwise empty kitchen. Reinhardt dance, oblivious, to music only he could hear - probably Hasselhoff.

Tapping a few keys, the screen changed as she accessed the feeds to another camera. It was an operative whose legs had gotten caught by the legs of a chair. From the knife, bowls, vegetables, and cutting board scattered around him, he had been cutting the sides for the tacos. Now he scrambled weakly as he tried to escape.

Morbidly, Sombra was reminded of the documentaries of prey animals in the jaws of predators.

“What are you watching?” someone asked behind her and Sombra jumped, embarrassed that someone had caught her off-guard.

She turned around to find Gabriel and swiped impatiently at her screens to close them. Turning around in her seat, she threw herself at her team leader and hugged him tightly. “I’m _so sorry_ ,” she whispered, digging her sharp nails into the plain grey hoodie he wore.

“It was a dark day,” Gabe agreed solemnly when she brought up the security feed to show him what she was doing when she couldn’t articulate it herself. He brought his arms up to wrap her in a rare hug. “Those were dark times.”


	10. A Homoerotic Volleyball montage

Cupping her hands around her mouth, Mei yelled across the makeshift court, “Dr. Ziegler! Relax!”

Fareeha snatched their medic out of the air just in time to be hit in the face with the volleyball. “Mei is right,” the pilot said with a wide grin as if unbothered by the red mark left on her face. “This is a  _ beach holiday _ – you shouldn’t be working!”

“If I’m not working, then who is taking care of you?” Angela asked tartly as she was bodily carried to the enormous shaded area created by a truly impressive and vaguely terrifying wall of beach umbrellas.

Lucio offered her a two-fingered salute as she was carried by. “Don’t worry, I got this,” he assured her. “Hold still, Fareeha.” The woman paused obligingly as Lucio turned on his speaker; the red mark on her face faded as the volleyball match continued behind her. “Got you all patched up.”

“Thank you,” Fareeha said dryly as she deposited Angela on the towel between Mei and Hana. “Please make sure she relaxes?”

“We’ll try,” Mei promised as Hana continued to fan herself as she watched the game.

When the Recall went out near end of the winter months in Gibraltar, it had been easy to ignore some of the work needed to make the base comfortable. Winston and Athena had kept it in good working order but certain systems around the base had been overlooked for the sake of practicality; others had been cannibalized for parts for Winston’s many inventions, which Torbjörn had been more than dismayed to find.

This he had expressed loudly.

Very loudly, usually at strange hours of the night. Like some strange kind of Swedish werewolf he howled and cursed and his voice carried through the halls. Those that showed up first didn’t sleep very well for some time.

At least until his daughter and Reinhardt’s armorer, Brigitte, showed up. She neatly got her father to stop whining and began scheduling inspections on the equipment. She drew up a color-coded list of repairs from most to least important.

Unfortunately, the cooling systems – aside from Athena’s server room, of course – were rather low on the priority list. Very low, in fact. Low enough that they were only just beginning to approach it as the months began turning hot.

The priorities were rearranged when everyone got tired of the smell of…um… _ sweaty man _ and the refreshing (albeit  _ annoying _ ) evergreen scent of two idiots in love pining for each other. Enough was enough; all of the windows were opened, all of the fans positioned to blow through the base, and teams were “volunteered” to assist in repairs. Soon it became evident that not everyone was quite mechanically inclined enough to assist (and who knew that despite being approximately 80% metal, Genji could  _ still _ have issues using a wrench?) and people were “volunteered” into repair service.

Repairs could not proceed under the current conditions however, so while they aired out the base to wash away the strange smells permeating the halls, they all trekked down to the beach.

Somehow they managed to piece together a net, but that was mostly due to the intervention of Satya and, of all people, Junkrat. The two of them managed to rig six of her turrets stuck to two spare lengths of rebar into a buzzing web of light.

“It’s all safe,” Junkrat assured them with a wide-eyed grin and a high-pitched cackle. “Y’ know… _ probably _ .”

Satya pressed the neatly-manicured nails of her right hand to her lips as if to hide a smile. “I would recommend against touching it, though,” she advised rather unhelpfully.

Because no one seemed to have any sense of self-preservation anymore, they all shrugged and played anyway. In hindsight, this is probably why Angela was fretting, half-dressed in her Valkyrie gear and fluttering back and forth through the air, dodging swings as she fussed over them…at least until Fareeha had put a firm stop to that.

“You don’t wanna join, loves?” Lena asked as she jogged over for a bottle of water which Ana handed her from the cooler. “It’s loads of fun!”

Hana and Mei both giggled. “We’re enjoying ourselves here,” Mei explained.

“Join us for a bit,” Hana said, patting the towel next to her.

Lena dubiously sat down, basking in the cool ocean breeze on her sweaty skin. “It’s a shame that Winston couldn’t join us.” They all shuddered sympathetically in unison. Their friend had begged off the trip, citing a dislike for the sensation of sand getting caught in his fur and the resulting cleaning that he would require. “It’s a shame that  _ anyone _ would miss a holiday like this!”

None of them mentioned that the thought of seeing Torbjörn in any way unclothed made their stomachs turn.

“Shh,” Hana said in an exaggerated whisper. “Quiet contemplation of the glorious view is all a part of this experience.”

Lena twisted to look at her in confusion – it didn’t seem much like something that Hana would say. “What?”

Giggling, Mei pointed back to the ongoing match. It didn’t take long for Lena to realize what they were talking about. “ _ Oh _ .” She pressed her hands to her flaming cheeks.

The teams had rather organically shifted into Skins versus Shirts, no doubt due to people wanting to show off. No one was surprised when Hanzo took his shirt out pretty much as soon as the beach trip was announced and had walked around as such until they were ready to leave.

No one was surprised either that McCree followed him around like a lost puppy, but they were all learning to ignore such things.

Brigitte had also joined the Skins team, shucking her tight shirt and now played in a pair of shorts and a very practical sports bra. In the hot Gibraltar sun, sweat turned her freckled skin slick and shiny. 

“You know,” Reinhardt chuckled with a knowing wink thrown Hana’s way. “You should visit the workshop sometime. She lifts my armor like it was made of air!” 

With a strangled sound that she hoped no one else heard, Hana fanned herself faster. She dragged her eyes off of the shadow of moisture in the dip between Brigitte’s shoulder blades and eyed the rest of the players on their makeshift court.

Fareeha had been dressed (or  _ un _ dressed) similarly and upon seeing that they were matching, the both had executed a truly terrifying chest bump. It had made the beads in Fareeha’s short hair click and swing and they laughed together, winding their arms around the other’s shoulders. Where Brigitte looked every bit the blacksmith she was, Fareeha reminded Hana of a sleek jungle cat, all lithe muscles and grace. 

Between Brigitte and Fareeha they were currently supporting their team as Hanzo and McCree were more or less only ogling each other when not actively interacting with the ball.

It was almost tragic that they were on opposite teams, McCree filling in for Lena while she lounged in the shade, but the number of times a ball hit one of them in the face because they were drooling over the other’s sweat-soaked form was worth it.

On the other team Soldier 76, though old enough to be their father, participated in a thin tank top soaked in sweat. He got way too into it, his competitive nature getting the better of him as he barked commands and plays to his team. Despite his apparent age he was in very good shape and if Hana had been the appropriate age (and didn’t get to hear him grumbling into his coffee mug every morning), she would probably be swooning after him. 

But now? Nope. 

Besides, the impression of a badass vigilante soldier he tried to keep at the forefront of his personality - like the mask poorly concealing his identity - was ruined the first time she had seen him dressed in her merchandise while hanging his laundry in one of the courtyards on base. (And now that she knew what to look for, that it was an  _ option _ , Hana caught glimpses of her shirts under his jacket and it took everything within her to not laugh out loud.)

Lucio had joined them, though what he wore could hardly be called a ‘shirt’ – it was more of a cropped tank top that didn’t even reach his waist before ending. He was constantly in motion, always swaying to the beat of music that only he seemed to be able to hear. Even when still and not in combat he reminded her of the characters in fighting games, always bouncing from leg to leg. His dreads, stripped of their ostentatious yellow plugs - like miniature speakers - bounced with him, drawing her attention to the lines of his back and the tribal-style tattoo of some kind of large frog on his arm. 

Catching her eye, Lucio turned and waved with a cheerful smile. Sweat drew shining trails on his skin and she had to look away quickly as he lifted the edge of his already scandalously-short shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. Soldier 76 yelled at him for his in attention and rolling his eyes teasingly at Hana, he resumed the game.

Eventually McCree took off his own shirt as well, showing off his warm sepia skin. Rough years and his age had caught up with him, making him just a little softer around the middle and arms, but active combat kept his body in shape. Hanzo promptly receive a volleyball to the face for staring, courtesy of Soldier 76.

“There’s a pretty good view here,” Ana said smugly, gently sipping from the chilled glass in her hand. Perhaps in a mock of her biotic darts, it was a poisonous yellow-green and decorated with a cheerful blue umbrella. She crossed her legs at the ankle as she leaned back against Reinhardt.

The big German gave a booming laugh. “Yes! The years have been kind to Jack – look at those arms!”

On cue, Soldier 76 turned his head to give them a baleful stare. He was struck in the face – since apparently that’s where everyone was aiming – by Fareeha who in turn had used Brigitte’s bent knee to launch herself into the air and spike the ball down at him.

“He always  _ did _ have a lovely body,” Ana said loudly as the old soldier scrambled to his feet.

“I am  _ not _ Jack,” Soldier 76 snapped as he tried to brush away the sand that clung stubbornly to his sweat. “And stop staring at me.”

Ana laughed and sipped at her drink again. “It’s hard not to, dear.”

“ _ Ja! _ ” Reinhardt exclaimed as Ana reached up to pat his cheek fondly. “Staring at anyone else would be  _ creepy! _ ”

Hana rolled her eyes. “Eew, old people in love.” She flashed a quick smile at Ana just in case the woman considered shooting her with a sleep dart, but was glad when the woman threw her head back and laughed. Reinhardt dipped his head down to press a sweet kiss to Ana’s cheek. “Eew!”

“It… _ is _ a very nice view,” Angela offered hesitantly,  eyes involuntarily drawn back to the match as Fareeha tossed her head, beads bouncing against the geometrically perfect arch of her neck .

Reaching into the cooler, Mei held out a frozen juice pouch. “Drink? They’re alcoholic.”

“Very tasty,” Ana agreed. “And I have more liquor if you would like to make them stronger.”

“Alcohol will only dehydrate you,” Angela said in halfhearted protest but still took a Blue Hawaiian from the cooler as Mei passed it around.

Satya, who was sitting nearby but not  _ too _ close clicked her tongue as if in disapproval. Lena turned, ready to offer a scathing retort before she remembered that many of Satya’s mannerisms weren’t necessarily as cruel as they may seem at first. “You all seem to have quite a… _ thirst _ .” Her eyes glittered and the tiniest of smiles twitched the corners of her blue-tinted lips that matched her nails almost exactly.

For a moment they all stared at her, slack-jawed, before laughing. It was so  _ rare  _ that Satya made anything remotely close to a joke – or seemed comfortable enough to tease – that it made the hilarity of her puns all the more enjoyable.

Hana gave a breathless wheeze. “ _ So _ thirsty.” She eyed Brigitte who seemed to catch her staring. Tucking a strand of her bright red hair – darkened to auburn with sweat – behind her ear, she struck a pose and flexed; Hana pretended to swoon and yelped when she accidentally squeezed her frozen drink all over herself.

Beside her, Lena pressed her hands to her blushing face again. “I wish I thought to bring my phone,” she whispered to Hana. “Emily would  _ love _ this.”

 


	11. An M. Night Shyamalan plot twist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “A part of me feels like a surgeon,” Hana complained halfheartedly, wiggling her nose just to feel the respirator shift on her face. “The other part of me feels like I’m an astronaut about to discover a new alien race - an astronaut that’s one of the first to die.”

“ _ Dad _ ,” Brigitte groaned, looking ready to yank out her hair. They were clearly in the middle of an old argument when Hana entered the shop as requested. “Let’s just call a professional.” 

With the kind of exasperation that only an engineer that had worked with the old iteration of Overwatch could muster up, Torbjörn huffed. “We don’t  _ need _ a professional,” he grumbled into his beard. “How hard could this be?” 

“Famous last words,” Brigitte muttered, absently rolling the ratchet in her hands so that it clicked as it spun. When her father glared at her, she made a face back. As she turned around, she caught sight of Hana and froze her in place with a beaming smile.

Turning away to hide a suddenly-blushing face, Hana found a pile of cardboard squares. She picked up one of them and found that they were gauzy filters set in a flimsy frame. Seeing that the argument wasn’t really ending anytime soon, she toyed with the filter in her hands, spinning it with her palms held on opposite corners. “What are we  _ actually _ doing?” she interrupted and Torbjörn spun to face her. 

“Don’t do that,” Torbjörn grumbled, waving his claw hand at her. “Ye’ll break it.” 

Brigitte looked sympathetic. “Well as you’ve noticed, the air systems are down - that’s what ten years of mechanical neglect look like.” Hana nodded even though it was obvious - she was there  _ to help with the AC repairs _ , after all and  the rest of the team had gone lounging on the seaside cliffs to cool off. There was a talk of planning another beach trip .

It spared everyone the sight of Hanzo haunting the halls and drooling after a shirtless and sweaty McCree, that’s for damn sure. 

“Thing is, even during Overwatch’s golden days, they hadn’t properly taken care of their equipment. There were enough people and enough of a proper budget that it could just be replaced when it broke,” Brigitte continued, not noticing or ignoring Hana’s momentarily distraction. “The equipment isn’t  _ terrible _ , but it requires a lot of work before we can fully turn it online...in good conscience.” 

Torbjörn huffed. “Safety concerns,” he said though Hana hadn’t said anything. “The ducts need to be cleared, the filters changed, and then the HVAC units itself fixed. I was in a different engineering department than those that usually dealt with this - and how as “maintenance” a synonym of “engineering”?”

“Dad,” Brigitte said with the air of someone very much used to reigning in her father. “Focus.” 

Casting a glare at her, Torbjörn huffed, muttering into his beard. “Things have an order of operations,” he grumbled. “Changing the filters is easy and the HVAC systems shouldn't be  _ too _ difficult to get fixed, but getting the ducts cleaned is another mess.”

“I’m guessing that’s where  _ I  _ came in,” Hana said a little sourly and put the filter in her hands down again. 

Brigitte smiled ruefully at her and Hana tried not to blush at the lovely suckerpunch of the full attention of a woman as lovely as Brigitte. “Dad’s going to go work on the main boiler in the basement,” she said gently. “You and I got air handler duty and I’m...ehm...a little too wide to fit in the ducts.” 

“There is too much ductwork in good condition to simply start over,” Torbjörn grumbled. “So we have to reuse where we can.” 

“You don’t have to agree right away,” Brigitte said with such gentle earnestness that Hana felt bad grumbling. Brigitte leaned back slightly, propping one large fist on a hip as she used the back of her other hand to wipe sweat - real or imaginary - from her forehead. She impatiently brushed her auburn hair out of her eyes and raised her other hand to tuck it back into a neat ponytail, revealing the words on her black shirt:  _ I exercise because I love eating _ . 

Hana tried not to let her eyes linger for too long on Brigitte’s arms, her shoulders, the hanging straps of her red jumpsuit, tied casually around her waist. Brigitte looked wonderfully surprised that Hana agreed, but Hana herself knew exactly why and her face burned for it. 

* * *

She regretted it a moment later when Brigitte helped her into a stuffy environmental suit and showed her how to fit the goggles and respirator over her face. 

“A part of me feels like a surgeon,” Hana complained halfheartedly, wiggling her nose just to feel the respirator shift on her face. “The other part of me feels like I’m an astronaut about to discover a new alien race - an astronaut that’s one of the first to die.” 

Brigitte laughed and Hana remembered how she had been suckered into this with a beautiful smile even if Brigitte didn’t seem to realize it. She hoped that her goggles weren’t fogging up. 

“In the ducts, no one can hear you scream,” Brigitte teased and Hana shuddered theatrically. She clapped Hana on a shoulder with a large hand. “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” She pointed to the vacuum nozzle in her hands. “Just brush out and suck up the clumps you see in there with that, and that’s it!”

Hana huffed halfheartedly. “It seems too easy.” 

“It’s not very difficult thing at its heart,” Brigitte said with a warm laugh. “Just like most things.” 

Trying to stall even a few seconds longer, Hana looked at the system in front of them. “So what’s wrong with it?” 

Thankfully, though Brigitte was clearly aware of her plan, she was merciful enough to allow her delay. “As far as we’ve found, nothing wrong with the system itself. The filter needs to be changed and the ducts are in desperate need of cleaning but aside from that, none of us can figure out why it’s been spitting smoke.” A large finger traced the path of the ducts. “We closed off the vent dampers so that the smoke wouldn’t spread - that’s why you haven’t smelled anything in say, the kitchen.”

“Spitting smoke doesn’t sound good,” Hana said dubiously, eyeing the big metal box that Brigitte had said was the main part of the system. 

Brigitte nodded. “Which is why I’m hoping to have the ducts cleaned - as much as you can reach from here - and change the filter before turning it back on. It could just be that there’s enough... _ gunk _ in there that it’s leaking out, but if that’s the case there could be serious problems with the system.” She spun the ratchet in her hands absently, using her large fingers to flip it around like one would a pen. “I’m not even sure which outcome I’d prefer. It’s a bit of an enigma since there doesn’t  _ seem _ to be any blockages or detritus in the system itself or even any signs of smoke. Hopefully after we get everything cleaned I can get a better idea of what  _ may _ be the problem, or at least narrow down some of the options.”

“We can just pretend that I understood all of that,” Hana joked halfheartedly. “But I guess that’s my cue.” She was rewarded with a stunning smile and she had to look away or be blinded. 

The ducts were just as dirty and disgusting as they expected and Brigitte clicked her tongue disapprovingly. She helped Hana clear out the first portion of the ducts, showing her how to use the brush and nozzle on the arm of the vacuum. 

“Alright,” Brigitte said with a deep breath. She wiped her forehead with the back of an arm, leaving an ashy line in its wake. “Oh! I almost forgot.” She pulled out a throat mic which she helped Hana put on. 

Hana tried to ignore the way her skin crawled at the thought of where Brigitte’s hands had just been and how it was now smeared all over her neck. 

“Start on the areas leading away from the unit,” Brigitte told her. “I’ll work on the unit and filter to make sure there isn’t any damage or backdrafting.” 

Nodding along as if she understood, Hana slowly climbed into the ducts. The metal cover thumped shut behind her, held open only by the hose and ropes that trailed behind her.

* * *

At first Brigitte thought the sounds that echoed in the ducts were just Hana. It was hard to hear anything else with her vacuum and brushes in the echoes of the ducts which could be why she didn’t hear it at first. 

She tapped the mic on her radio. “Hana?”

The vacuum stopped. “ _ Yeah? _ ”

“Be quiet for a moment, okay? I thought I heard something.” 

In the echoes of the vents he could hear the rustling of Hana’s movements further down. “ _ What is it? _ ”

Brigitte didn’t answer at first, listening carefully. “I don’t know,” she said at last. “I think it stopped.”

The vents rattled as Hana shifted again. “ _ Should I come out? _ ” 

The engineer considered it for a moment. “How much more do you have?”

“ _ Not much, _ ” Hana said immediately. “ _ I’m pretty far down the...um...vent I guess. _ ”

“Run,” Brigitte corrected absently. “It’s called a run.”

Hana huffed and Brigitte could hear the sound of her boots against the ducts. “ _ You scared me, I thought you were telling me to run at first. _ ”

Brigitte listened again. “I don’t hear it,” she said after a pause. “Maybe it’s just the echo of your equipment.” 

“ _ I’m almost done with this side, _ ” Hana replied. “ _ But I  _ think _ I can see the end of this...um...run. _ ”

“Okay, go as far as you can. It will probably end in either a turn or a damper box. Clean as much as you can and then let me know before you start trying to come on out.” Her answer came when Hana turned on the vacuum again and resumed her cleaning. 

A few minutes later, Brigitte heard the sound again and she moved to the hatch to hold it still, half heartedly hoping that the noises she heard were caused by the wiggling hose.

The sound continued and she tapped her mic again. “Hana.”

The vacuum shut off. “ _ Yeah? _ ” This time the sound continued. The ducts wiggled as if something was moving. 

“Stay still,” Brigitte murmured.

“ _ I’m not moving _ ,” Hana whispered back. 

The ducs continued to rattle and there was the sound of scraping. “Be careful, Brigitte said. “I think there’s an animal in there with you.”

“ _ An animal? _ ” Hana squealed indignantly and the ducts wiggled more as she kicked. “ _ I’m coming out _ ,” she huffed. “ _ I need a break _ .”

“Hold on,” Brigitte told her. “Tuck your arms in close and I’ll pull you out - you can leave the vacuum so you know where you left off.”

Hana huffed again. “ _ As if I’d forget _ ,” she said as Brigitte began to pull on the rope. “ _ I just need to look for where the dust starts. _ ”

When Hana finally emerged, she was covered in black and grey dust. Standing on the tarp under the ducts, she began shucking her gear. “Boy am I glad to be out of  _ that _ ,” Hana breathed. “It was getting  _ hot _ in there.” 

“Cool off and get some water,” Brigitte advised. “Do you know about how much more you have?”

“Not much,” Hana assured her as she flopped into a chair in the corner. Cracking open a bottle of water, she took a moment to take a few hearty gulps from it and to splash a little of it on her face. “Two meters? Three? I could see the end when I came back out and it looked like there were some smaller ducts I could stick my arms in.”

Inspecting the system, Brigitte nodded absently. “That sounds like the dampers, which are closed,” she said. “So you won’t be able to reach inside. And we’re going to have to be more careful if there’s something in the ducts with you,” she pointed out. “Did you see any holes while you were...ah... _ spelunking _ ?”

Hana made a face at her. “No, the duct was really sturdy,” she said more seriously. “I was surprised. Aside from a lot of dust there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with it.”

“I think this was the renovated area of the base,” Brigitte said. “So the units and everything are all newer. They were going to be for the officers but then...well, tacos happened.”

Shuddering theatrically, Hana took another sip of her water. “I used to  _ like _ tacos.”

“I’ve never had one, not until I moved out of Pappa’s house,” Brigitte admitted, moving to kneel in front of the system and Hana watched the play of muscles on her back as she inspected...something that Hana had no name for. “Reinhardt-”

They were both interrupted by a shuffle and a loud  _ thump _ from the vents. 

Very slowly Brigitte backed up in a crouch, moving to stand beside Hana who had also gotten to her feet. Now without Hana in the vents or the sound of the vacuum, they could hear other noises: a low, warbling mutter punctuated with soft  _ meep _ s. 

The vents shook again, this time hard enough for them to see it move.

“I think it’s stuck,” Hana whispered. 

“Why wasn’t it making this much noise before?” Brigitte whispered back. 

They both jumped when the vents shook again. It stopped for a moment and they heard the noise again: a low, plaintive moan, the flutter of something breathing hard. 

“I think it’s scared,” Hana said, slowly edging forward.

Brigitte grabbed at her arm, her hand slipping in the clammy sweat from the hot environmental suit. “Hana! You don’t know what it is!” 

“It’s stuck,” Hana told her stubbornly, slapping her hands away. “We can’t just  _ leave _ it there.” 

Carefully she put her hands on the duct just before the filter. Immediately the heart-wrenching cries ceased but she could still hear the sound of its breathing. 

Well, that wasn’t quite right. At first she  _ had _ thought it was breathing but now it reminded her almost of the sounds of water on the beach: a regular rasping hiss that only resembled breathing. There was another sound too, like cloth moving. Was it a nest?

“Hey,” Hana cooed, trying to be as soothing as possible to the terrified creature stuck inside. “You okay there?”

She jumped when the ducts banged. The hissing was back, sounding more snake-like now before it blended into a soft, plaintive croon. 

“I don’t like this,” Brigitte muttered, easing up beside Hana. 

Spying a small panel, Hana pointed it out to Brigitte. “What’s this?”

“That’s the filter rack,” Brigitte replied. “Don’t open it though, or you might let it into the system.”

Hana huffed. “We need to see what it is and how it’s stuck and I  _ don’t _ want to stick my head in the ducts,” she pointed out.

Brigitte made a disapproving face but still opened he magnetic strips covering the filter. The animal - or whatever it was - warbled and shifted in panic, shaking the vents.

“Hey,” Hana crooned to it, pressing her hands to the ducts as if it could see or feel her. “Shh, it’s okay.” 

Whatever it was cried again, this time sounding like it was in pain when Brigitte wiggled the filter. “I think it’s stuck,” she said grimly.

They pulled out another environmental suit and Hana put her respirator and goggles back on just to be safe. She cautiously poked her head into the ducts, shining her headlamp toward the light.

There was only darkness.

“I don’t see anything,” she said to Brigitte, voice a little muffled. “Just...darkness.” She wiggled more of her body in, half expecting something to leap out of the darkness. “Hey, little buddy? Where are you?”

Then, horror of horrors...the shadows moved. 

At first she thought it was just her imagination but as she crept forward and swept her light along the sides of the duct...she couldn’t deny it; the darkness was too perfect, the dust simply  _ too dark _ for it to be natural. 

Trembling, Hana paused and looked down at her gloved hands in front of her. It rested in the ash-colored dust, thinner here than it had been in other areas she had cleaned, as wisps of black lifted like steam. 

She whimpered, unable to help herself, as the shadows coating the interior of the vent seemed to pulse and move. They writhed and wiggled like tentacles and she flinched as they banged against the duct; that had been causing the noises, then. 

“ _ Hana? _ ” she heard Brigitte ask over her throat mic. She heard it through the ducts as well, the engineer’s voice muffled by the layer of steel between them. “ _ Are you okay? _ ”

Hana felt her throat lock up, too lost in the eldritch horrors in front of her. In the light of her headlamp, the shadows moved and twisted. She was about to back out quickly, to tell Brigitte to go and come back with one of her father’s turrets, with a containment shield,  _ something _ to hold the monster in the vents but as she was about to move, it made a noise. 

Somewhere in the center of the octopus-like mass of darkness, something like a head - like a rabbit’s head - emerged and it whined.

Perhaps it didn’t see her; the head disappeared and it wiggled again, slapping the edges of the vent. 

_ It was trying to get out, _ she realized. Somehow it had gotten caught in  _ something _ and now the reaching tentacles were trying to search for purchase on the smooth interior of the ducts. 

“Hana!” Brigitte asked more urgently and Hana found her voice. 

“It’s...it’s okay!” she said and all at once the... _ thing _ in front of her froze. “Don’t wiggle the...um...filter thing, though. I think it’s caught up in it.” 

The reaching tentacles retreated,coalescing into a blob that was much smaller than it had initially appeared. Now more of the vent was visible and Hana could even see the filter. It watched her with glittering scarlet eyes.

“ _ Are you okay? _ ” Brigitte asked again. The rope around her waist tugged gently. “ _ Just say when and I’ll pull you out. _ ”

Swallowing hard, Hana squinted in the low light at the thing. It was rabbit-shaped, or vaguely so and it didn’t surprise her. How it escaped was an entirely different problem, but it was easy to guess how it had come to be stuck in the vents: most likely it had gone to hide in one of the ducts and when Brigitte and Torbjörn closed the vents to work on the systems, it had become trapped. Probably even when they turned on the units, it had gotten caught up in the filters - they  _ seemed _ gauzy when she had toyed with one in Torbjörn’s lab, but there may have been enough layers to catch whatever smoke the demon rabbits seemed to be made of. 

“It’s okay,” Hana repeated. 

The thing’s ears pricked forward at the sound of her voice. It wiggled again, making the vent and filter rattle. 

Cautiously Hana stretched a hand toward it and it froze. “It’s okay,” she cooed. “Hey, sweetie, it’s okay.”

“ _ Hana, it’s a wild animal, _ ” Brigitte warned her tightly. “ _ Be careful! _ ”

She wiggled forward again and the shape dissolved, pressing itself away from her with a scared warble. Swallowing hard, Hana scooched herself forward again. “Hey, it’s okay baby,” she crooned as gently as she could. “I’m not gonna hurt you.”

Seeing her hand in front of her, she thought she knew the problem. The vents rattled and thundered as she struggled to remove her heavy gloves, then her mask and respirator; her headlamp fell off and rolled across the duct to shine uselessly against a wall. 

“ _ Hana?! _ ” Brigitte cried. 

“It’s okay!” she yelled back. “I’m okay.” 

The rope around her waist tugged reprimandingly. “ _ Don’t scare me like that, please! _ ”

“I’ll try not to,” Hana promised and looked around for her light. 

The light moved and she tried not to make a terrified noise that would further concern Brigitte. It moved again and Hana peered into the darkness. 

A tentacle of the demon rabbit had extended, stretched out to reach for the light, and was slowly and awkwardly pushing it back toward her. 

“ _ Ddok ddok hae _ ,” she crooned to the shadowy creature and it paused, its tentacles retreated with a quiet whimper. She held out a hand toward it and slowly wiggled closer. “It’s okay, clever baby, I won’t hurt you.” 

The filter rattled as the demon rabbit jolted against it. It cried out again so pitifully that something in Hana nearly broke. 

“It’s okay, baby,” she cooed to it. “I’ll get you out of here.”


	12. A Mating Display

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a misunderstanding and not just because of autocorrect. 
> 
> (Well there was that too, but mostly in relation to those weird things called Feelings.)

A strict internal clock woke him at dawn but just this once he indulged himself in watching his cowboy sleep. The warm summer sunlight filtered in through the open window to illuminate golden motes of dust as they drifted through the air. Even so early it was disgustingly warm, warm enough that they had both kicked off the light sheet they had tucked themselves under the night before and warm enough that they hovered on each other’s periphery – skin-to-skin contact would make them sweaty and sticky, and not in a fun way.

Unconsciously Hanzo’s breathing slowed to sync up – more or less – to Jesse’s as he slept, his eyelashes fluttering against his cheeks as he dreamt. A thin sheen of sweat – since the cooling systems in the base still weren’t working – made his exposed skin seem to shine and darkened the hair at his hairline. The rest glowed in autumnal colors of red and brown and gold, the subtle highlights drawn out by the light of the morning sun.

An unfamiliar feeling wormed itself beneath his ribcage and he sat and breathed, waiting for a name for it to come to him. When it did, his breathing fell out of sync with the sharpshooter’s.

_ I want this _ , Hanzo thought with an ache in his throat and chest.  _ For as long as I can have it, I want it – I want  _ him.

The realization – though the words existed only in his own thoughts – sent goosebumps down his arms and offered him a very brief respite from the sticky summer air.

Hanzo very carefully reached a hand out, cautious knowing the aspects of Jesse’s past that affected the way he slept – more than once they had accidentally scared the other awake. The last time it had happened, Jesse had bruised Hanzo’s wrist and had been nearly inconsolable.

But when Hanzo’s calloused fingers carded through Jesse’s hair, he only mumbled sleepily and tipped his head into the gentle caresses. Jesse yawned as he stirred awake and Hanzo held his breath against stale morning breath. “I could get used ta this,” the gunslinger murmured, his heavy drawl made thicker with sleep. When he finally opened his eyes, Hanzo’s breath froze in his throat. “Mornin’, darlin’.” McCree reached up with a hand to cup Hanzo’s cheek and pressed his chapped lips against Hanzo’s in a chaste kiss.

“Good morning,” Hanzo whispered and brought his hand down to card his fingers through McCree’s unruly beard. He leaned in for another kiss and then another. With a pleased rumble, McCree rolled over, tugging Hanzo with him to sit astride his hips. Jesse gently cupped Hanzo’s waist with one hand and ran his stump over Hanzo’s thigh as if he had quite forgotten that he had taken his prosthetic off.

For a moment all Hanzo could do was stare down at McCree. His eyes shone with golden highlights and his hair, getting long now, spread out on the pillow beneath his head like a crown in the same colors of his beloved serape. 

Hanzo’s chest clenched.  _ I am  _ **_so gay_ ** _ for this man. I want to be gay with him forever.  _ What did they call that feeling? That dizzying fall for someone when you never want to stop, want to be always in their company and in their arms.

His breath hitched - they called it love.

_ I’m in love with Jesse McCree.  _

“Darlin’?” McCree asked with a smile, sitting up slowly and propping himself up with his flesh hand. Without his prosthetic arm he couldn’t do much but he wound as much of his stump around Hanzo’s waist as he could, bringing them closer together. “What's wrong?”

Hanzo cupped his chin in both hands, running his thumbs reverently over McCree’s chapped lips, following the dip beneath his lower lip that led to his chin, tracing the line of his jaw coated with the thick strands of his red and gold and auburn beard. 

Despite his serious expression, Jesse half-closed his eyes and tipped his head back with a throaty hum of pleasure, not unlike a husky purr. Hanzo pushed him down so that he was reclining again. 

McCree peered up at him, that loose smile still on his lips, as he bared his throat for a known killer. Before he could think better of it, before he could convince himself otherwise - that it was a  _ bad idea _ , that McCree -  _ that Jesse _ \- deserved better - he swooped down. A kiss was planted on the peak of Jesse’s chin and as the man made as if to kiss him, puckering his lips, Hanzo ducked lower and pressed a kiss to the curve of his throat, punctuating it with a gentle nibble.

Beneath him, McCree chuckled and his throat bobbed as he swallowed. “Han…”

Then Hanzo licked him, starting in the hollow of his throat and using his tongue to trace the curve of his tendons to his ear. 

With a wordless cry of surprise McCree bucked, nearly unseating Hanzo, and laughed as he flopped back down. “Han!” he protested, raising his flesh hand to wipe away the sticky trail of saliva. “You’re like a cat, I swear!” Gently he pushed Hanzo off and collected another gentle kiss. “I’m all sweaty and I’m going to take a  _ real _ shower, not a tongue bath - you’re welcome to join me.” He winked, tucking the thumb of his flesh hand into the waistband of his boxers teasingly as he walked across their shared room to the attached bathroom. 

Hanzo watched him leave, careful to keep his face neutral. If McCree noticed, he gave no sign. 

He waited until the door closed at least part of the way before gathering his clothes and leaving quickly.

* * *

 

Hanzo charged through the base like an angsty thundercloud. Everyone steered clear- save Hana, who was distracted, and they nearly collided. 

“Watch your- Hanzo?”

Hanzo wasn’t prepared to have a conversation right now. With anyone. Before he could come to any rational decision he spotted the window- sitting open to beat the heat. He dove out of it, getting his feet into the wall and charging up towards the catwalks. Brigette stuck her head out to make sure they hadn’t just lost a teammate, and then ducked back in.

“Well, I think everyone will have gotten out of his way, so we shouldn’t run into anyone else-”

* * *

McCree was only about a minute into his shower before he started to get the sense something was wrong. In five it was an unmistakable dread, and he turned the water off to stick his head into the room.

No Hanzo.

_ Fuck _ . 

He hastily grabbed his towel, leaving a trail of water and suds across his floor and into the hallway as he flung the door open. 

“Has anybody seen-”

Hana shrieked, Brigitte shrieked, something else shrieked and they all took off running down the hallway.

McCree blinked after them.

Hadn’t there been another voice, just now?

No time to consider it, he charged down the hallway, trying to see where Hanzo might have gone. Time was of the essence - he knew what kind of mood Hanzo could work himself into. 

_ Do you need anything, Agent McCree? Full frontal nudity was added to the banned board on August 7th of-  _

“I’ve got a towel- hey, wait, Athena- you’re like, omnipotent right? All knowin’ and alla that?”

_...I cannot see very far outside of the base- _

“No, that’s fine- Have you seen Hanzo? D’ya know where he went?”

... _ Agent McCree. I am not able to communicate the location of distressed agents unless they are physically injured.  _

McCree clutched his towel to his chest, momentarily forgetting that he was in the hallway of the base.

“Distressed? My darlin’s distressed? Do you know why? Did he talk to anyone? Did he-”

_ Nudity, Agent McCree- _

“But is he okay? I know you can’t tell me where he went but is he-”

“Jesse? What the hell are you-”

“GENJI-”

Genji immediately started backtracking as Jesse ran for him, but Jesse outpaced him before he had the sense to turn around and sprint for it and grabbed him by the shoulders. 

“Genji ‘yer brother’s run off and I don’t know what I did but he’s upset and I-”

“If you promise to put on some clothes and not...lean...against me - I’ll find him.”

Jack turned the corner and froze. Seeing him and realizing what their positioning looked like, the other two froze as well. “It’s...Jack, it’s not what it looks like, I swear.” 

Very slowly Jack raised his hands like a priest warding off the visions of evil and slowly backed around the corner. 

Genji gently pried Jesse’s hands off the metal panels of his shoulders.

“Jesse, I will find him. You have my word. Now please- for the love of God and in the name of our friendship- go put on some underwear.”

* * *

Once the vague horror about seeing McCree’s bare ass had worn off, Genji was actually a little bit concerned. Hanzo hadn’t seemed inclined to go running off on McCree the way he was in the habit of doing to others, and (though he shuddered to think about it) nothing Jesse could be doing while....totally naked...would send Hanzo running like that. 

Unless he needed to honor kill McCree. Which would be rather inconvenient.

Answers first. 

He set off down the hallway, spotting Brigitte and Hana as he rounded a corner-

“Have either of you seen-”

Hana jumped, letting out a startled screech. Brigitte rounded on him, her wrench in hand-

She paused. “Oh, hey Genji. What’s...up.” she edged closer to Hana, whose back was still turned to Genji. He frowned.

“Have either of you seen Hanzo? I think something...happened...”

Something was moving underneath Hana’s shirt, like an updraft from the solid concrete of the hall and he thought he saw a pair of red eyes peering through the curtain of her hair. 

“-Have you tried the catwalks?” Brigitte moved more firmly to block his view of Hana, meeting his eyes dead on as though daring him to say something.

He blinked.

“Oh, of course! I’ll catch you two later then.”

He considered warning them that Jack was likely down the next hall, but shrugged internally as he went out the window and scrambled up the wall. Whatever weird air currents involved, it was entirely possible that Jack should be informed about it (though Genji had been too much of a pranking shit in his own time to ever warn him directly). 

He made a mental note to ask them how it went next time he saw them, and took off up the side of the building. 

“Of course I would find you here, brother,” he said, sighing when he finally caught sight of the other Shimada. He watched the proud curve of Hanzo’s back sink lower. “What is wrong?”

Hanzo didn’t turn toward him. “It is nothing of importance.” 

Unable to help himself, Genji snorted. “Clearly it is  _ important _ ,” he said. “At least enough for McCree to come running out of the shower in nothing but a towel.” Genji very carefully approached Hanzo, not quite sure of how his brother would react. Watching him, he saw Hanzo flinch at the mention of the other man. “Did something happen with you two?”

“No,” Hanzo said very unconvincingly. He bowed his head and shoulders again as he sighed. “Nothing that I should not have first expected.” 

Barely resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration, Genji came around and sat down beside his brother, letting his legs dangle over the edge of the catwalk. 

“I fucking hate you sometimes. He did not say. “You are utterly and completely full of shit” was a close second. Right up there with “Please stop spewing pretentious bullshit for once in your goddamn life and talk to me” and “Will you please just stop. Just stop. All of this. Stop.”

He picked a nicer route. 

“Brother, tell me what is on your mind. I cannot help you if you do not tell me first what is wrong.”

“Not  _ wrong _ ,” Hanzo corrected. “Just something that I should have...expected.”

Genji peered at his brother was well as he was able to. His eyes were red as if he had been crying and Genji knew better than to mention this to Hanzo. Sometimes the best thing to do was to say nothing so he did, waiting him out.

“I was wrong to think that I was... _ am _ worthy of a man like Jesse McCree,” Hanzo said at last. 

Taking a deep breath, Genji steeled himself for the conversation that he very much  _ did not want to have with his brother _ . “Whatever kind of...relationship you have going on with McCree...it’s not based on  _ deserving _ . One doesn’t have to be  _ worthy _ of the other.”

Hanzo looked down and picked at the skin of his wrist. “I licked him.” 

Of all of the responses that Hanzo could have given, that was perhaps the one that Genji least expected. For a few moments his mouth and throat worked as he tried and failed multiple times to come up with a response. “Hanzo...I...I…” he paused and took a deep breath, braced himself, made his final prayers of a clean and sane mind and asked, “Did he...like it?” 

“No,” Hanzo said, bowing his head even further forward. 

It was worse than Genji had anticipated. He made a mental note to speak to Angela later about brain bleach, to ask her if it was possible for her to purge his memory, and to speak to Zenyatta later about ways to work around this new kind of trauma. 

He took another fortifying breath. “Do you...need advice?” 

“I doubt anything you say would have any value,” Hanzo replied. 

Genji reminded himself that he should  _ not _ try to murder his brother. That would just make a mess and a moping McCree was a depressing (and quite annoying) thing. “Might I remind you that between the two of us, I had not been lacking in terms of...um....partners. In bed.”

Turning slightly, Hanzo fixed him with a disdainful glare. “Why would I wish for advice from ventures that have failed?”

_ Ouch _ . 

“I’ll have you know…” Genji stopped himself and waved his hands as if to disperse the words he had been about to say. “No, nope, we’re not going there.” He took a deep breath. “Okay. Hanzo. What  _ exactly _ is your problem?” 

Hanzo scoffed, at once almost seeming back to his old self. “And what do _ you _ think you would know about us?” he demanded. 

“I’ll have you know I’m in a relationship right now and we’re quite fond of each other, thank you very much,” Genji said tightly, reminding himself again not to murder his brother…

...though it would be quite a nice role reversal. 

“ _ Yes _ ,” Hanzo snapped back. “ _ But how did you know when it was time to lick them? _ ”

Genji forced himself to take a very slow breath in and exhale just as slowly. “W-.” He stopped. He needed another breath. He allowed himself to take one, and then two for good measure.

“What now?” 

Hanzo frowned, his eyebrows a stormfront along his forehead. 

“If you have not proceeded that far into your relationship then you are of no use to me.”

“I’m-” Genji took a deep breath. There’d been a ceremony. A lovely little ceremony in Nepal. It wasn’t really married, but it was pretty damn close. Close enough that Hanzo was treading a really thin line before he got smacked in the face. He took a moment. Licking him. Far enough in relationship. Licking. Gesture of affection.  _ Licking.  _

When Emily had visited the base she’d licked Lena. He’d thought it was odd but-

Oh. 

_Oh no_. 

Once more Genji found himself woefully unprepared and completely out of his element. The best thing to do at this point was to escape. He leapt to his feet. “You’re right, I’m such a...promiscuous little shit that I haven’t had any strong and meaningful relationship with anyone enough to lick them...so...um….I can’t help you and I need to go right now. I hear...um...my master calling.” 

“Go,” Hanzo muttered and turned away. “Let me suffer in peace.” 

Behind him, Genji felt his hands raise up slowly, shaking as he struggled to hold himself back from strangling his brother. With a helpless noise, he whirled and raced down the catwalk.

Hanzo took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the humid seaside air as in the distance he almost thought he could hear Genji cry, “ _ MCCREE! _ ”

* * *

 

Hana and Brigitte were just backing out of the kitchen when Genji nearly bowled into them again. Surprised, Hana threw her hands into the air, palms out as if to stop him. 

“Hana!” he cried and then looked down at her hand. “What happened? That’s some bite you have there?”

In any other situation, he would have been more suspicious of their awkward silence and the nervous way that Hana and Brigitte exchanged glances. 

“Nevermind,” he said when they didn’t answer right away. “ _ Where’s McCree? _ ” His head snapped up. “Athena! Where’s McCree?”

_ Not on base, _ Athena replied.  _ As I told Agent McCree earlier, I am not allowed to communicate the location of distressed agents- _

“Oh,” Brigitte said a little too-quickly, interrupting Athena. The AI seemed to sigh. She awkwardly shuffled the large bowl of chopped fruits and vegetables between her hands. “He went to town.”

“Yeah!” Hana added, her voice higher than normal as she bent to scoop up a plastic bag of carrots. “He said something about roses and a teddy bear.” 

Cursing, Genji shoved past them and took off down the hall. “ _ Thank you! _ ” he yelled belatedly over his shoulder before narrowly missing running into a wall. He wasn’t so lucky on the next turn, missing the corner but losing his balance as he had to twist aside so he didn’t run over Zenyatta. He tumbled end over end on the ground, finally skidding to a stop as his  “master” slowly turned. 

“Here, my student,” Zenyatta said warmly and one of his harmony orbs slammed into Genji’s face. “Oops.” 

“ _ Master! _ ” he cried as he scrambled to his feet, brushing the hovering orb away from his face. “ _ Where is my phone? _ ”

Zenyatta cocked his head to the side. “Now my student,” he said with a hint of a smile in his synthetic voice. “What have we discussed?”

Knowing better than to rush his master, Genji puffed his cheeks out as he sighed. “You are not responsible for my belongings and I should be sure to know where exactly they end up.”

“Exactly,” Zenyatta said. He lifted the phone from one of the pouches around his waist. “I found it in the refrigerator this morning. Actually I had found a block of cheese on your dresser plugged into the wall and when I took it back to the refrigerator I found your phone in the little plastic baggie you use to store the cheeses you actually like.”

Genji snatched it out of his master’s hand. “Thank you master!” he cried. “You’re the best!” He leaned in quickly to give him a peck on the cheek but instead slammed his face into the omnic’s unforgiving faceplate. “Thank you!” he yelled again, his voice a little muffled as unheeding of his wound he took off down the hall. 

Sighing, Zenyatta glanced down at the trail of blood. “I always seem to be following trails of blood with him.” He glanced down at his  antarvāsa and poked at one of the round drops of blood. “And he stained them  _ again _ .”

* * *

All things considered, McCree’s day was looking up. 

He’d found the fancy chocolate Hanzo liked- the soft Japanese ones that melted at room temperature- and grabbed a few of the specialty sodas and moon cakes for the lunar new year while he was at it. The teddy bear was up to his knees, pink, and had a nice little heart with white curled writing that said “ _ I’m bear-y sorry” _ He was in line, ready again to apologize for whatever it was he’d done wrong, when his phone buzzed.

_ Genji: McCree. I need you to lick my brother. _

McCree raised an eyebrow. Man, autocorrect was getting adventurous these days. He typed with his thumb, giving the bear in his arms an unconscious little squeeze. 

**_McCree: I like him just fine. What’s this about?_ **

The bear made a home on the checkout counter, and McCree was sure to put his phone away as he was being rung up. It was only polite. 

But well, by the time he got out of the store and to the sidewalk he had 6 unread texts and two missed calls. Yeesh.

He opened the conversation, deciding the call could wait. 

_ Genji: Lick him. L I C K him.  _

_ Genji: For all of our sakes. You need to lick him _

_ Genji: In the name of my sanity _

_ Genji: For our friendship, Jesse _

_ Genji: Just do it for me _

_ Genji: You need to just. Lick him. Lay it on him. I don’t care how or when and I don’t want to know, but do it as soon as possible.  _

For a long moment, Jesse stood there staring down at the display on his phone. Turning on his heel, he walked back into the store. “Did you forget something?” the clerk asked politely. The teasing smile slid off his face when he saw what McCree had put on the belt: two handles of  Fireball whiskey .

“Liquor,” McCree said without inflection. “I need it.”

The cashier let out a strained little laugh.

“You uh. Got enough there?” He trailed off as McCree looked him dead in the eyes, his expression not changing. 

“There is not enough liquor or therapy in the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know it's (probably) going to be interesting when the chat starts with:
>
>> What if Genji pulls Hanzo aside and asks him what's wrong because he's been acting grumpier than usual lately...
> 
> Also, I think this premise was what started our _actual_ discussions and led to the document that is currently 42,571 words long... 


	13. My Inner Demons

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it is determined that Jack is _not_ Hana's father and she doesn't care what he thinks.

It took another forty minutes and a bite to the flesh between Hana’s thumb and forefinger for them to free the smoke creature. 

In the end they needed to cut the filter free of the frame and carefully draw it and the creature out to gently untangle it.

Much to Hana’s surprise, once the creature was ( _ finally _ ) free of the filter, it didn’t run away. For a moment it swirled there like a pile of dust before very slowly rising into the air and coalescing into a shape. 

The rabbit was much smaller than she expected, much smaller than the others she had seen in the hellish pit that had been the west wing of the base. It was about the size of a regular rabbit or maybe a little smaller, as black as the dust that made it up though it had paler grey extremities and a nearly-white smear of a collar. 

Its nose twitched and it looked up at Hana as she knelt in front of it. Brigitte hovered nervously over her though even she couldn’t deny that the demon-creature was  _ adorable _ .

“Hey,” Hana said softly to it. “Are you okay?”

Very much like a real rabbit, it twitched its ears and nose and shook its head. Rising to its hind legs, it peered at her with eyes that faded from demonic red to an inky black. It rubbed its face with its forepaws and then held them out as if reaching for her hands. 

Slowly, afraid that she was going to be bitten again, Hana reached out her cupped palms toward the rabbit. It rubbed its head, shedding curls and wisps of black smoke, into her hands as if begging for attention. 

Hana’s heart melted.

* * *

 

After an uncomfortable and awkward journey through the base where the deathbunny was wrapped up in her used environmental suits they made it to Hana’s room. (Hana’s heart had nearly stopped when they encountered Genji along the way, but the ninja had been too preoccupied with searching for his angsty older brother to pay any attention to how suspicious they were acting.)

The first four days of hiding it in her room - much to Brigitte’s distress - were...eventful.

She learned that it liked to be held (or at least  _ seemed _ to) and was almost always cool to the touch, or at least around the same temperature as the air around it. It liked to sun itself in the light peeking through the curtains much like a cat and was surprisingly mild for a creature that may have tried to kill her in the past.

Shortly after she gave it a bath to wash off the dust that somehow still clung to it, Brigitte came by and helped her to set up a sort of litter box to it. They considered making a cage out of chicken wire to keep it in a corner of Hana’s room, at least until they turned to find that the deathbunny was  _ playing _ with it, drifting back and forth through the holes in the mesh and drifting down the coil of wire like sand.

Clearly cages weren’t about to hold it back so they gave up.

At first Hana was concerned about what she was going to  _ feed _ it. Did it eat meat? Did it eat what a normal rabbit did? (What  _ did _ normal rabbits eat? Carrots? Fruits? Hana had to do a quick check.) But while she was looking up how to care for rabbits with Brigitte, the demon creature had found a box of chips from one of her prospective sponsors. By the time they turned around and realized that the rustling behind them should be suspicious, it had already eaten three bags of chips.

Each bag had been pulled open the way Hana herself would, not as if it had been chewed open, and neither of them really wanted to think too hard about the implications of that fact so they ignored it.

“I  _ think _ they’re fine,” Hana said when Brigitte looked nervously at her. “They’re supposed to be organic vegan chips but I wasn’t too into them. I doubt they’d  _ kill  _ it…”

Brigitte ended up sleeping over that night, uncomfortable with leaving her alone with the demon creature. “You know,” Brigitte said a little too-casually as they lay in bed. In the sliver of moonlight that drifted through the crack in the curtains they could see the hellbunny exploring Hana’s desk. It was remarkably thoughtful, moving with great care among the clutter and turning into dust if it encountered an area that it couldn’t hop through without disturbing anything. “This wasn’t how I imagined getting in your bed.”

Next to her, Hana huffed and rolled over. Brigitte looked down at her, surprised to find that she was asleep already.

She laughed quietly so she wouldn’t wake the gamer. “Of course.” Looking up, she found the hellbunny peering at her from the shadows, its eyes swirling black and red. “Are you just going to sit there and stare?”

“ _ Die, die, die _ ,” it whispered in its breathless “voice”.

“I hope that’s not a threat,” Brigitte whispered back.

Its nose twitched and it seemed to sink a little lower, becoming closer to a puddle of smoke or dry ice until only its head poked up. Brigitte sighed when it made a low  _ meep _ that sounded close enough to an apology.

Brigitte considered Hana, who had fallen asleep cuddling her arm and was mashing her face into the gear tattoo on her bicep, then the hellbunny. With her free hand, she patted the bed between them. “Come on before I think better of it.”

Almost comically it lifted its head from the desk, its ears pricking forward. It drifted like wind-blown smoke, barely visible in the shadows of Hana’s room, and reformed in the space Brigitte had patted. “ _ Die, die, die _ ,” it whispered and settled down.

“Is that all you can say?” Brigitte wondered sleepily. If she had been more awake she would have been more cautious about offering her hand to it.

For a moment it considered her outstretched fingers before tucking its cheek against them and closing its eyes. “ _ Die, die, die _ ,” it whispered, its nose twitching in time with the words.

Brigitte smiled and fell asleep with her hand on its head.

* * *

The hellbunny, already an oddity, proved to be eerily intelligent.

For one it could open bags of chips and did when it was hungry so in a way that was a plus. Once it had seen where Hana threw away the empty bags, it cleaned up after itself as well. It watched when Brigitte clicked her tongue at the state of Hana’s trash bins and began sorting trash and recycling and darted over to the next bin to do the same.

It picked up quickly on voice commands though neither of them were certain (or really  _ wanted _ to know) if it simply  _ understood _ them somehow or if it was just that clever. The second morning Hana sat down with it and discussed how it needed to stay in the room and to stay hidden; it swirled around her in a cloud of black smoke before reforming in her lap and laying its ears down as if to say,  _ I will stay right here _ .

The third day Hana started one of her scheduled streams. Five minutes prior she realized that she didn’t know what to do about the rabbit and instead asked it to either remain unseen while she plays her games – easy because the camera was mostly focused on her head and shoulders – or to stay under the desk. If the deathbunny moved at all that night, it was only between Brigitte who joined her for her stream and the well under her desk where it swirled around her ankles soothingly when she got tense.

It took a day or so for them to get used to it and its presence and its tendency to phase in and out of a physical form but the thing that creeped them out the most was certainly the way it ate. 

Hana learned that it didn’t  _ mind _ being picked up, and seemed to enjoy cuddling with one or both of them in the evenings. As far as she could tell it didn’t seem to mind any drastic changes in temperature so it wasn’t  _ cold _ , but perhaps it simply liked being held.

“We should name him,” Hana told Brigitte on the fourth day as they fed it carrots. They tried not to look too closely at the creature, as its mouth seemed to open into a void of nothingness and shadow. It seemed to go through the motions of moving its jaw and chewing but as far as they could tell it didn’t actually have  _ teeth _ with which to chew. 

“We shouldn’t get too attached,” Brigitte corrected but then like the hypocrite she was, flipped a round section of carrot into the air like a coin for the deathbunny just to watch it bounce up to catch it. It didn’t quite  _ jump _ but there was no word for the motion it did or the roiling plumes of black and gray smoke it gave off. “Who knows when it would wander off?” 

Hana giggled and held out her arms for the hellbunny. It “bounded” over to her and drifted in a dark plume of smoke so it could form again in her arms. “Min,” she decided. “Because he’s so clever.” 

“ _ Die, die, die, _ ” the rabbit whispered and she giggled again when his not-quite-there whiskers tickled her face in little rabbit kisses. Brigitte threw her hands up in the air though she was still smiling. 

* * *

It was a bad night. Hana woke with a strangled gasp, flapped her hands to dissipate the imaginary plumes of smoke from her nightmare and rolled out of bed. For a long moment she lay there on all fours on the ground, gasping for breath in the still air of her room. 

“I need air,” she said to no one and stumbled to her feet, feeling clammy in her toes and fingers as she fumbled to open the door. 

She shuffled down the hall to the kitchen, hoping that she didn’t run into anyone along the way - with agents like those in the new Overwatch, there were a lot of sleepless nights. It was almost reassuring to know that she would never really be alone in her midnight wanderings. 

The light in the kitchen was on and she peeked inside to find Soldier 76 cradling a mug of coffee between his hands. In the early mornings and late nights no one felt like dealing with secrets and pretenses and pasts and his mask sat on the table beside him. 

Soldier 76 - Jack Morrison - squinted up at her when she walked in and lifted his mask to his face. The red visor flared for a moment before dying as he pulled it away from his face. “You too?” he asked gruffly. 

Wordlessly Hana nodded and went to the sink. “The usual,” she said. It wasn’t a liquor or coffee kind of night. Perhaps she would steal some of Hanzo’s tea - he had managed to find a generic kind of jasmine-green tea in town that she hadn’t had a chance to try yet. 

Feeling something on her ankles as she filled the kettle, she looked down. She jumped when she saw a clinging gray-black fog around her bare feet and for a moment the dreams of the battlefield, of her MEKA falling apart, of watching her team fall apart returned. 

Then the mist swirled and settled - Min stood on his hind legs in front of her, his ears pressed flat and his front paws folded contritely in front of him. 

The kettle overflowed in her hands and Hana swore quietly in Korean as she turned off the tap and tipped some of it out. When she settled it on one of the eyes of the stove and turned on the burner, she leaned against the counter and sank slowly to the ground. 

“Sorry baby,” she mumbled to Min whose ears pricked forward at the sound of her voice. “You just...startled me.” 

Soldier 76 choked on his coffee. 

He coughed for a full minute, wheezing, as Hana ignored him and continued to go about making her tea. Min jumped up on the counter beside her - actually jumped this time though some of his motions were off, not unlike a glitching video game. She ran her fingers through the wisps of smoke and fur between his soft ears. 

“Hana.” Soldier 76 finally managed, trying to sound stern through the rasp of his coughing. 

“What’s up daddy-o?” She monotoned, turning. Jack looked crestfallen as he lifted his mask to his face and the visor lit up- 

And then his gaze fell on Min. 

“Hana-” He said again. There was a muted click as his visor snapped into place. On the stove, the kettle began to whistle.

“Dad.” She monotoned back, shooting him a fingergun with her free hand. 

“I am not-  _ what is that thing? _ ”

“Min.” She scratched the hellbunny behind his wispy ears, turning away from Jack to pour her tea. Fragrant steam rose in billowing curls.

On the counter next to her, Min bounced. “ _ DIE, DIE, DIE! _ ”

Smiling, Hana leaned down to press a quick kiss to Min’s twitching nose as Jack leaped to his feet in alarm, sending the chair clattering. She nearly dropped her mug but Min caught it in an eldritch curl of roiling black smoke. His eyes turned red as he turned to glare at the soldier at the table.

“That thing is dangerous, Hana,” Soldier 76 snapped, reaching for a weapon he wasn’t carrying. 

Hana huffed a sigh and accepted the mug back from Min. “Thanks, sweetie,” she said, letting him lean up to tickle her nose with his whiskers. To Soldier 76 she said, “Nah, he’s fine.” She reached into one of the cupboards and fished out one of her bags of chips. Tugging it open, she offered one to the hellish creature on the counter in front of her. 

“No,” Soldier 76 snapped. “It’s  _ not _ fine.” 

Huffing, Hana clenched the bag shut in her hand and snatched up her mug. The tea sloshed a little and Min flicked his ears forward. “Yes, it’s fine. He’s been in my room for the past four days.” To Min she said, “C’mon, let’s head back.” 

With a last glare at Jack that seemed strangely smug, Min dissolved into smoke and trailed after her like a shadow. 

“No way, we’re not keeping that  _ thing! _ ” Jack took few steps after her before leaping back when the shadow on the ground doubled back toward him. “Hana, HANA DON’T YOU WALK AWAY FROM ME YOUNG LADY!”

Hana dodged Ana as she swept into the room. When the sniper looked at her, she quietly held up her half-open bag of chips and the mug of tea as if in surrender. The swirling black mist around Hana’s ankles didn’t escape the sniper’s attention and she frowned down at it for a moment or two.

“That thing’s dangerous!” Jack snapped, jabbing a finger at the mist. 

“Yeah, my ankles are deadly.” Hana said flatly. 

Ana sighed. “Dangerous?” she asked, pointing at the mist. Hana shook her head, glad that the mug hid the faint red mark that remained from the one and only time that Min had bitten her. (Though she was sure that the sniper’s sharp eyes had already seen and disregarded it.) Ana considered the mist for a moment.

“Later?” 

Hana nodded. Satisfied, Ana turned her attention to Jack. 

“If you don’t quiet down and let  _ some of us sleep _ , I will  _ put you down _ .” 

Jack’s fists clenched and he took a large step forward. “ _ You wouldn’t dare _ .” Wordlessly Ana whips out her dart gun and presses the barrel to Jack’s chest. 

“Five seconds,” she warned and moved her finger pointedly along the trigger guard. 

Rolling her eyes, Hana shuffled out of the room. “ _ Hana! _ ” Jack roared. “ _ We’re not do- _ ”

Ana watched as Jack’s body fell to the floor, the dart protruding from the center of the bunny logo on Jack’s shirt. She tapped the barrel of the gun against her cheek thoughtfully. “Probably not the safest thing to do,” she muttered to herself. “But that man’s head is harder than steel - I’m sure he’s fine. Still, I guess I had better take him to Angela.” Grabbing him by the ankle, she began dragging him down the hall. 

Angela would be awake. And if she’d been awake too long, well.

Mercy was only a good target when concentrating on a patient, poor dear. And Jack would live. 

(Probably.)


	14. A big hoopla about nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Hanzo is a strange bird, Jesse is occasionally a douche with an acoustic guitar, and Brigitte is _very gay_.

Brigitte found McCree where one typically found him these days: in Bastion’s garden staring mournfully up into the boughs of the highest tree where Hanzo had “hidden” himself.   
  
(As far as she was concerned that was their issue to work out and not hers, especially since Hanzo came down periodically for food, to use the bathroom, and to sleep so she tended to ignore their little drama. Angela and Pharah found it good entertainment and would sometimes set up chairs to watch the pair; Bastion enjoyed the company even though they weren’t really interacting with it and sometimes chirped or warbled greetings at them.)   
  
“McCree,” she said when the man took a breath and paused in whatever lengthy apology he was trying to give in…Spanish? Japanese? She wasn’t entirely certain. At least this time he hadn’t brought his acoustic out. “May I speak with you for a moment?”   
  
With a last mournful look up in the tree, McCree smiled at Brigitte and tipped the brim of his hat to her. “Hey missy,” he said. “What can I do ya for?”   
  
She regarded him, wringing her hands nervously. “Um…I just…need some advice.”   
  
McCree grabbed her hands and smiled. “Don’t know why yer comin’ to me, but ya don’t need to worry.”   
  
“Can we...go somewhere private?” Brigitte whispered, glancing nervously over her shoulder. Just because she didn’t see any of the pair’s usual watchers doesn’t mean that they weren’t there – it was almost unavoidable on a base full of ex-military, -mercenaries, and –assassins.   
  
“’Course!” McCree said with a sympathetic smile. He let go of her hands and jerked this prosthetic arm over his shoulder. “C’mon, I know just the spot.”   
  
Brigitte followed nervously as the cowboy led her down a long path and out the main gates. He shot a finger-gun at one of Athena’s hidden cameras as he took her down a narrow path and deeper into the trees.   
  
“Han and I go here sometimes,” McCree told her over his shoulder. “It’s a nice picnic spot that only a few people know ‘bout.”   
  
“That’s nice,” Brigitte said awkwardly and McCree shot her a grin over his shoulder.   
  
The path opened up into a small clearing next to a narrow little creek just barely wider than the width of her palm. It cut through the moss and grass in a jagged line, eroding the dirt around the nearby trees to form cages and hollows of their roots. A fallen tree coated in moss made a comfortable seat which McCree gestured gallantly to.   
  
Unable to help herself, Brigitte allowed him to take her hand and bow her into a seat and giggled. McCree settled on a rock just in front of it; from a bare patch of dirt at the edge of the clearing, it had been moved there.   
  
“Now,” he said with a sigh as he settled his long legs. “Tell ol’ Uncle Jesse what’s on yer mind.”   
  
Reminded of her dilemma, Brigitte sobered and the smile slid from her face. “Just…” she toyed with the hem of her shirt, then the hole in one of the many pockets of her pants. Jesse waited patiently with a kind smile as she gathered her thoughts. “I…want to ask Hana out but I don’t know how to,” she blurted.   
  
Jesse didn’t laugh; he nodded seriously and the nervous knot in her chest loosened. Everyone else she had asked had only laughed and told her to just do it. Not very helpful, of course.   
  
“She’s just…I don’t know,” Brigitte said, blushing as she looked down. “It was kind of weird at first when I remembered that she’s 19 but then…well she’s 20 now and our ages aren’t…they aren’t weird, right?” she peeked at McCree through the long strands of her red bangs. “Right?”   
  
“I wouldn’t say so but then my idea of ‘weird’ may be different than yours.” There was a peculiar look on McCree’s face.   
  
Brigitte nodded, looking back down at her feet. The moss beneath her practical boots had flattened, leaving behind deep imprints. Next to hers and overlapping a little was another set and she distracted herself for a very brief moment wondering if it was Hanzo’s or McCree’s.   
  
“I just don’t know how to ask her,” Brigitte said lamely. “Everyone else just says to…just do it but…how do you bring it up?”   
  
McCree chuckled and she looked up, afraid that he was laughing at her. “Lemme guess,” he said dryly. “Either yer father or Rein?” Blushing, Brigitte nodded. “Shoulda known.”   
  
“I shouldn’t have asked them,” she agreed shyly. “In hindsight.”   
  
The cowboy snorted, stretching both arms over his head. “Well, ya live and ya learn,” he said with a teasing but sympathetic smile. “But that’s how hindsight works.” He grunted as his back cracked. “Now, tell me about Hana.”   
  
Brigitte blinked at him. “But you-”   
  
He held up a hand to stop her. “Pretend I don’t,” he said with a kind smile. “Pretend she’s a complete stranger to me.”   
  
That was easy enough: Brigitte could talk about Hana for hours and had done so to Reinhardt during one of his armor fittings.   
  
It had literally lasted for hours as Crusader armor was finicky when parts had to be completely replaced and Brigitte had been forced to completely replace one of his pauldrons…come to think of it, she could wax poetic about armor almost as long as she could about Hana.   
  
McCree listened carefully, asking a few questions here and there but otherwise let her speak her mind. She nearly told him about their adventures with Min and how they now spent a lot of nights together but unsure of his knowledge of the hellbunny and his thoughts on its presence in the base she stopped herself.   
  
She didn’t know how long she sat there talking but McCree didn’t complain and only rarely interrupted – a few times to ask questions, once to offer her some whiskey from the flask on his hip, and once to offer her a piece of jerky from one of his many pockets. Not trusting the questionable nature of his offerings, she politely declined. He always prompted her to continue.   
  
Eventually Brigitte realized that she was repeating herself and stopped. This time she took the flask he offered and took a sip – it was surprisingly good whiskey that seemed so out of character for such a scruffy man. Wasn’t it the stereotype that cowboys (and men like McCree) to had _terrible_ taste in liquor? When he saw the almost guilty look on her face, McCree laughed as if he knew what she was thinking.   
  
“Well,” he said at last. “It sounds like we got a big hoopla about nothin’.”   
  
Brigitte’s heart sank and she looked down at her shoes again.   
  
“Naw,” McCree continued. “Ain’t nothin’ like that, it’s just that from what I see is that there ain’t nothin’ for you to be worried about ‘cos Hana likes you just fine.”

She frowned at him. “But _how do I ask her out?_ ”

McCree rubbed his chin and lips thoughtfully. He began ticking up prosthetic fingers. “First you figure out if she is interested in a relationship and what kind. Then you need to find out if the age difference is going to be a huge issue - a 19 year-old and a 28 year-old dating might raise some red flags for a lot of people.”

Surprised, Brigitte waved her arms between them. “Whoa, hold up, what?” She and McCree blinked at each other. “I’m 23. Where did you get 28?”

“Your application,” McCree said. “Well, your Overwatch profile - it’s not _really_ an application at this point.”

Brigitte sighed heavily. “Pappa filled that out for me; _of course_ it’s wrong.” 

Holding his fist to his mouth McCree tried to hide the smile upturning the corners of his lips. “So your age difference won’t be a problem,” he said, sounding a little relieved and it very suddenly struck Brigitte how worried he had been and yet despite his own grievances with the idea, had been prepared to say nothing so long as it made her happy. “Now we need to determine if she is interested in a relationship with a colleague.”

The wind fell from her sails and she swallowed hard. “Do you...do you think it’ll be an issue?” she asked in a small voice.

McCree smiled and as he opened his mouth to speak, their coms both rang. It was a group message from Ana to everyone on base: _Dinner is in ten minutes. Be there or starve, I don’t care._

As they were about to put their coms away, it rang again with another message from Ana.

_Hanzo, get down from that damn tree or I will shoot you down._

They both paused as a few other messages came through:

[from Angela Ziegler]: _please don’t_   
[from Angela Ziegler]: _not again_   
[from Angela Ziegler]: _I don’t want a repeat of what happened with Jack_   
[from Jack “Soldier 76” Morrison]: _YOU PROMISED NOT TO TALK ABOUT THAT_   
[from Jack “Soldier 76” Morrison]: @ _Athena, please change my name in the server. I am NOT Jack Morrison_   
[from Admin!Athena]: _My apologies_   
[Admin!Athena: name: “Jack “Soldier 76” Morrison” has been changed to “Jackie Boy”]   
[from Jackie Boy]: @ _WINSTON_   
[from Admin!Winston]: _what_   
[from Jackie Boy]: _Athena needs to be fixed._   
[from Jackie Boy]: so does my name   
[Admin!Winston: name: “Jackie Boy” has been changed to “ Indiana Boy from Bumblefuck ”]   
[Admin!Winston: name: “Indiana Boy from Bumblefuck” has been sent to permanent!status]

Trading glances, they shook their heads. Most people knew better than to antagonize Winston about Athena but it seemed that “Soldier 76” had yet to understand this. Brigitte rolled her eyes, put her com on silent, and tucked it away. She watched McCree fumble with his for a bit, imagining that it was difficult for him to manipulate the settings on his phone with only one hand, since the screen didn’t seem to register his prosthetic left hand. Brigitte wondered absently if there were any modifications she could do to make it easier for him...

“We best be heading back,” McCree said awkwardly, tucking his phone away and pushing himself to his feet with a groan.

“You’re almost as old as Rein,” Brigitte teased.

Jesse held a hand to his chest as if hurt. “Hey, he was old even when _I_ joined!”

They made their way back to the base in thoughtful silence. “Can we talk again later?” she asked in a small voice as they approached the main gates.

“Always,” McCree said cheerfully.  “What kind of date were you thinking of?”

“There’s a skating place in town,” Brigitte said cautiously. “Maybe she’d like to go there.”

McCree shot her a thumbs up. “Looks like you don’t need me for that, then,” he said with a laugh. He paused and rubbed the back of his head. “Just...ah…”

Her heart dropping, Brigitte stopped and looked at him.

“Just...be careful around Jack. Back in the day he was a huge stickler against the whole ‘conflict of interest’ slash ‘fraternizing with teammates’ thing even though he was the biggest hypocrite about it.” Jesse coughed awkwardly. “Uh…’cos...y’know...he an’...”

Brigitte flapped a hand. “Yeah, he and Reyes had a huge thing going. Pappa talked about that a lot.”

“Just...try not to talk too much about it where he could overhear,” Jesse advised, fixing his hat as they made their way back to the clearing with Hanzo’s tree.

They found Hana leaning against the wall near the tree, her eyes on her com. She waved when they approached, popping a bubble on her pink bubblegum. “Hiya,” she said cheerfully as they approached. “You needed me, cowboy?”

“Aw shoot,” Jesse drawled, tipping the brim of his hat toward her. “I’m so old I’d gone an’ forgotten...why don’cha ask Brigitte here? She mighta had something she needed from you.” Brigitte stared at him, incredulous - _how was this guy in black ops?_ He winked at her. “S’cuse me, but I gotta see if I can get my cat out of the tree.” He jerked his thumb up into Hanzo’s tree where they caught the tiniest glimpse of just the tip of Hanzo’s scarf.

From Hana’s look she knew something was up as well. They waited until McCree wandered over to Hanzo’s tree. “There’s a skating place in town,” Brigitte blurted. “Do...would you…”

“Yes!” Hana said a little too quickly and blushed cutely. “Um...I would like that,” she added, looking down at her feet.

Brigitte swallowed nervously. “As...not as friends,” she forced herself to say. “Like a…” her lips froze around the word.

“Like a date?” Hana asked, her voice cracking a little. She pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Look at me,” she muttered. “I thought I was better than this.”

“No!” Brigitte blurted. “You’re the best!”

They fell silent for a moment as they composed themselves, listening to McCree trying to woo his man down from the tree in what may be Japanese. “He planned this, didn’t he?” Hana said. “The cowboy.”

“I was talking to him about how to ask you out,” Brigitte admitted.

Hana smiled and Brigitte’s stomach did somersaults. “I did the same. Sneaky cowboy.”

Nervously Brigitte tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “So...skating?”

“Skating,” Hana agreed. “This Friday?”

“What’s this about skating?” they both squeaked in surprise when they heard Soldier 76’s rough voice from the doorway behind them. From the wide-eyed look Hana sent Brigitte, she had received a similar warning from McCree about the old soldier.

“I’m surprised you didn’t need hearing aids, old man,” McCree called from the tree. “Mind your own dang business.”

Soldier 76’s featureless mask swung toward McCree. “It _is_ my business if agents are being compromised in such a way.”

A scowl passed over McCree’s face like a thundercloud. “Like yer one to talk,” he growled. Up in the tree, Brigitte saw Hanzo peek down at them and tried not to smile. “You an’ Reyes an’ all.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Soldier 76 growled.

“Then how ‘bout Ana an’ Rein?” McCree snapped. “Or me an’ Hanzo?”

“It’s not safe for agents to go out alone,” Soldier 76 added.

McCree crossed his arms. “Oh fer _fuck’s_ sake, Hana’s a soldier and Brigitte can take care of herself - _both of them_ can.”

“And McCree’s gonna be with us,” Hana blurted. She glanced nervously back at Brigitte who nodded minutely in agreement.

“That’s right,” McCree agreed smoothly. “Bonding, y’know?”

Soldier 76 crossed his arms over his chest. “Bonding.”

“Yup,” Brigitte piped up.

“Just the three of you.”

“Yup.”

Soldier 76’s fingers drummed on the sleeve of the leather jacket he still wore - he never seemed to take it off except to clean and mend it. “That’s not much of a bonding,” he said disapprovingly. “‘Team’ implies more than just a few people.”

“It ain’t…” McCree paused almost imperceptibly. “It ain’t team bonding.”

“Why not?” Soldier 76 demanded. “How have you receive approval for such an outing otherwise?” He nodded to himself, clearly feeling quite justified about something. “Skating tomorrow night seems like a very good team bonding event. I’ll coordinate with Winston; you can thank me later.”

For such an old man, he could move _quickly_ and walked back into the base before they could yell after him. Above them, a window opened and Ana poked her head out.

“Last call or all of you are going to starve!” she yelled. With unerring accuracy, she pointed at Hanzo still in the tree. “ _You_ have _two minutes_ to get down here or I will get my gun.” She disappeared back into the base.

McCree scrubbed his face with both hands. “Well…” he made a helpless noise as he looked at Hana and Brigitte.

They exchanged glances. “Well,” Brigitte agreed.

“Did our date just get hijacked?” Hana grumbled, crossing her arms. “No fair!”

Sighing and puffing out his cheeks, McCree ran a hand through his hair. “Well,” he said a little too loudly to just be talking to Brigitte and Hana. “What’cha say, Han? Bet that’d be a sight - two middle-aged men on roller skates, huh?”

They all looked up into Hanzo’s tree in time to watch him leap across the gap between the boughs and the base and scramble in through an open window.

“Fucking hell,” McCree muttered.


	15. A Middle-Aged Man on Roller Skates

Sombra sighed, kicking her legs up as she reclined in her chair. A gesture brought up the screens that displayed her unread messages. Making a face, she deleted half of the messages from Talon - perhaps they were important at some point but then the thread of the message had almost completely derailed while Moira and Doomfist bickered. 

She perked up when she noticed a direct message:

> **D.Va:** azu!!!
> 
> **D.Va:** azu!!!!!!
> 
> **D.Va:** i asked squire out!
> 
> **D.Va:** were going on a date tmorrow

It took her a moment to remember who “squire” was. “Been awake too long,” she muttered to herself - she and Hana had been talking almost constantly for the past few months about her girl-crush on an engineer at the Overwatch base they referred to as “squire”. Sombra smiled and brought up her keyboard. 

> **Azúcarina:** congrats!

D.Va’s response was almost immediate. 

> **D.Va:** thanks!
> 
> **D.Va:** im super exicted
> 
> **Azúcarina:** I can tell
> 
> **Azúcarina:** where are you going?
> 
> **D.Va:** roller skating
> 
> **D.Va:** the grumpy old dad hijacked our date tho :(

Sombra laughed despite herself. The grumpy old dad? Was that the yakuza princeling? Or maybe the old soldier? Considering that Hanzo was only eight years older than her, she hoped that Hana wasn’t talking about him. 

A few other messages fluttered up. 

> **D.Va:** the cowboy tied to help 
> 
> **D.Va:** it was sweet
> 
> **Azúcarina:** but he didn’t succeed?
> 
> **D.Va:** no :(
> 
> **D.Va:** since the entire world is joining us
> 
> **D.Va:** you should join us too haha
> 
> **[D.Va sent you an address]**

Sombra smiled indulgently. In a lesser person she may have felt a little guilt - she doubted Hana would invite her if she knew who she was. 

She snorted as she was instantly proved wrong. 

> **D.Va:** i play to win
> 
> **D.Va:** and i bet I can beat you Sombra
> 
> **D.Va:** ...i mean...azu
> 
> **D.Va:** ;)

Throwing her head back, Sombra laughed. “Oh, you’re  _ on _ ,” she said to her screen.

* * *

The “date” was off to a perfectly miserable start. But to be fair, many things were miserable when they involved Soldier 76, the fun police.

It started with the initial date-crashing incident of course. Soldier 76 discussed it with Winston before coming to dinner - just barely making it into the dining room before Ana kicked them out - and received his approval for the trip. Winston announced at the table that it was mandatory for everyone to attend. 

Finding the place was no issue - there were only so many skating rinks in the area - but getting them to agree to even let Winston in, much less Bastion and Ganymede, was a whole other battle. 

Then the date turned into another disaster entirely. As Hana had secretly hoped, Sombra had indeed showed up...along with the team from Talon. 

“Darling,” Moira was saying as she fussed over Reaper who continued to slap her hands away. “Sweetheart, you really should be wearing protective gear -  _ all _ of you should. Are you sure you didn’t want to dress up?” She gestured to the striped leggings and colorful coat she wore. 

“Moira,” Reaper hissed. 

Moira waved her hand dismissively. “No, I’m serious,” she said. “You knew we were coming here and even when you were buying your gear you didn’t want to get any pads. Why didn’t you want to dress up?”

“Why are we dressing up?” Hana asked suspiciously. 

Moira’s smile was eerie. “Roller derby, of course.” She gestured to her painted face with a flourish and tossed her blue hair. 

“Roller derby,” Hanzo said, clearly unimpressed. 

“Roller derby,” Sombra confirmed with a wink that made him recoil. 

“Roller derby,” Moira said, with emphasis. 

Soldier 76 and Reaper snarled. “ _ Stop saying ‘roller derby’! _ ” They looked at each other, horrified that they had both said the same thing. 

“I do not understand,” Hanzo said. “What does... _ that _ -” he gestured to Moira’s face. “Have to do with  _ that _ ?” he gestured vaguely to her feet and her colorful skates.

Sombra laughed. “It’s-”

Reaper covered her mouth. “You put on skates and beat each other up.”

“Bout makeup!” Moira said with a too-loud laugh, prying his hands off with her sharp (fluorescent orange) fingernails. It reminded them very uncomfortably of the aunty they had never really wanted to visit growing up. “As identification, as intimidation, that sort of thing.”

Hanzo looked thoughtful and grabbing the back of his shirt, ripped it off. He gestured to his tattoo. “Is this sufficient?”

McCree, returning with his rented skates, tripped over his own shoes and tumbled to the floor. “Ow,” he said. “Don’t mind me.” 

“No,” Sombra said, though her eyes raked up and down his body. “Bout makeup is for the face but feel free to stay like that always.” 

Growling, McCree pushed himself to his feet. “Shut up, you don’t even like men.”

“No,” Moira purred and Hanzo, suddenly self-conscious, tugged his shirt back on. “But we do know how to appreciate the human form.” 

“I am uncomfortable now,” Hanzo muttered. 

“Didn’t know it was possible,” Hana muttered back. When he looked at her incredulously, she waved her hands dramatically. “You fight with one tit out  _ constantly _ .” 

McCree snorted and Hanzo stalked away with the air of an offended cat. “Wait - darlin’...!”

“No, I like this!” Reinhardt roared excitedly as he began to wrestle his own shirt off. It got caught somewhere around his elbows so he wiggled in place for a while trying to get it completely over his head while everyone watched. 

Soldier 76 groaned, staring up at the ceiling. “If we’re doing this,  _ everyone must be fully clothed! _ ” Genji, who was already halfway out of his obnoxiously neon clothes, pouted.

“I’m pretty sure we’d be kicked out otherwise,” Ana muttered and sighing, Genji began dressing himself again.

Moira sighed regretfully. “Truly a shame.” 

“What are you doing here?” Soldier 76 demanded, crossing his arms over his chest. 

Sombra rolled her eyes. “We were invited? And we wanted to skate so…”

Laughing, Hana clapped her hands. Brigitte looked a little concerned. “Let’s do this.”

* * *

Unsurprisingly, the night  _ still _ didn’t go quite as planned. 

It turned out that Hanzo didn’t know how to skate and went about it much like a baby giraffe learning how to walk for the first time. It took everything in him not to laugh but McCree was the only one allowed to come near him so he took over for the lessons. 

Even if he had to put up with Hanzo mocking him for the neon leg-warmers he wore. 

Zenyatta sat out with Bastion and Ganymede who clearly weren’t about to start skating anytime soon (much to the employees’ not-so-secret relief). 

No one could figure out what to do about Winston...did he require four skates or two? How much weight could roller skates support? And Reinhardt, while not  _ quite  _ as heavy as an adult male silverback gorilla, required special skates too. None of them knew how to skate so Tracer and Lucio took it upon themselves to carefully teach them as they were the only ones fast enough to get out of the way if they fell. 

Most of the team ended up free-skating in the open rink but on the derby rink...all hell was breaking loose. 

Moira and Reaper were challenging Soldier 76 and Mercy to the most bizarre game anyone had ever seen and Sombra, Hana, and Brigitte were all there to record it. It meant that they occasionally had to dodge various projectiles that weren’t meant to be thrown in the derby rink.

Despite Mercy’s rather peculiar balance of pacifism and violence, it all seemed to go up in smoke the moment she stepped on to the rink. Soldier 76 seemed to struggle a bit with the skates but once he got into the swing of things, he was just about as aggressive on the rink as he was in the field. Moira seemed quite at home, strangely enough, even going so far as to taunt them on occasion, skating backwards and wiggling her fingers mockingly at them as she drifted past. 

With the three women heckling them on the sidelines (“Harmacist!” Brigitte cried. “Battle Mercy!” Hana shrieked. Sombra hushed them while she recorded but still couldn’t quite stifle her own giggles.)

There was a lot more tackling, flying elbows, and in the case of Jack and Gabriel, an all-out brawl. 

The rest of the team had scattered. It didn’t take them long to realize that with Jack’s attention caught up in a roller derby brawl, he wasn’t there to enforce their mandatory attendance. 

In the end half of them left and the other half decided to call a temporary truce while they went to the bar area of the rink and got plastered. The bartender looked like she wanted to get just as plastered as them. At first she had seemed moderately terrified but now she went about it with such a blase attitude, as if she had seen it all before and it was just another day at the rink. 

Widowmaker, dressed in a white corset and white skirt, snorted into her mulled wine. “This is not  _ skating _ ,” she said loftily as she stared disdainfully at the neon lights of the rink. 

“This isn’t  _ humane _ ,” Hanzo hissed back, clinging to the bar while he still tried to get his feet beneath him. 

“If you don’t get a hold of yourself, I will drink your liquor,” she replied and reached for his glass. “All of it,” she added and smirked to herself while Hanzo scrambled to get his feet (and skates) under him and reach for the glass on the bar at the same time. He yelled when he slipped and fell. “Really, this is pathetic. I have seen you do fantastic things in the field and yet you are bested by four wheels strapped to your feet.” 

Hanzo sent her a poisonous look. “I hadn’t thought I could find anyone more ridiculously dressed than Dr. Moira or  _ the cowboy _ , at least until I laid eyes on you.” 

They traded poisonous glares before Widowmaker turned to the bartender who looked like she was fantasizing about stabbing the wine opener into one of their eyes. “Another round for my sad little friend here.” She turned back to Hanzo as the bartender rolled her eyes and began preparing another drink. “The only thing more ridiculous than the showdown currently going on in the derby rink is the sight of a middle-aged man on roller skates that can’t even stand.” 

“I didn’t want to be here,” Hanzo hissed back, managing to pull himself upright enough to throw himself into a bar stool. “I didn’t want to go to some  _ team bonding _ ... _ thing _ .” 

Widowmaker made a face as she drank deeply from her mulled wine and gestured to the bartender. “Something stronger, I think,” she said loftily. “It might even call for that swill you Americans call  _ alcohol _ .” The woman rolled her eyes and picked up a bottle from the speed bar, pouring a healthy measure into a rocks glass. (“You know we’re in  _ Spain _ , right?” the bartender muttered to herself.) “When Sombra invited us to skate, I thought it was  _ proper _ skating, hence…” she gestured to her outfit. 

Rolling his eyes, Hanzo threw back the beer that McCree had bought him - long since grown warm, causing him to make a face. They both turned when they heard a commotion from the derby rink and watched silently as a glowing purple orb rose slowly into the air like a ridiculous beach ball. 

Turning back around, Hanzo and Widowmaker threw back their next round of drinks and slapped the bar with their empty glasses. “Another,” they chorused. 

* * *

McCree made his way back to the bar, his hair and shirt a little sticky with sweat but a wide grin on his face. 

“Man,” Lucio complained as they stepped off of the rink. “I miss  _ my _ skates.” 

“Don’t be hatin’,” McCree said with a laugh. “Let’s pick up Han’ and Satya and we can be headin’ back t’ base.” 

Hana waved excitedly as she, Sombra, and Brigitte made their way back from the derby rink. “Hey! Don’t be leaving so soon!”

“It’s late,” McCree said, uncaring that he sounded like he was whining. 

Brigitte rolled her eyes. “You’re so old,” she teased. “It’s hardly even ten.” 

“Hardly even  _ ten _ ,” Sombra muttered but her expression turned innocent when Hana and Brigitte turned to look at her. 

“You’re  _ so old _ ,” Hana teased, sticking her tongue out. McCree and Lucio traded amused glances behind their back. 

Sombra turned and pointed a neon-gloved hand at Hana. “Hush,  _ chica _ ,” she said severely though the effect was ruined by a smile on her fuchsia-painted lips. “You aren’t  _ that _ much younger than me.” 

The smirk on Hana’s lips widened and Brigitte turned her head to laugh. McCree waved to the bartender who, with a tired sigh, moved over to take their orders. He ordered them a round of beers that were negated by Hana’s sudden interjection of “ _ sake bombs! _ ”

Looking around, McCree finally spotted Hanzo who looked to be deep in conversation with Widowmaker of all people. “Should I be jealous?” he muttered to Lucio as he threw back is drink a bit faster than he probably should have.

“Nah,” Lucio said with a laugh. “Heard them talking earlier - they’re just complaining about the skating rink.” 

McCree eyed their serious looks and decided that Lucio was probably correct. From behind him, he heard Sombra yell “ _ you’re how old?! _ ” He sighed and waved to the bartender again. “Best be keepin’ those shots comin’,” he muttered to her. 

A few shots later, he was laughing along with Hana and Brigitte as they teased Sombra about her age. Turns out that the infamous hacker was only a few years younger than him - who knew? 

“Hey,” Hana interrupted, getting the attention of everyone at the bar. Even Satya, who had holed herself up in a corner and was reading a book. “Another round of shots, please,” she said to the bartender who rolled her eyes again and began pouring. “I just wanna say...thanks. It was supposed to be...it  _ wasn’t _ supposed to be a team bonding night, but I just wanna say...thanks for making it a fun night.” 

She didn’t say anything about the full-body flinch McCree gave, instead picking up the first finished shot from the bartender. “ _ Geonbae! _ ” 

Widowmaker and Hanzo, clearly rather drunk, had to be prodded to take their shots (and in hindsight they were probably  _ too drunk _ to keep drinking, but they all silently came to the same conclusion that the two of them hungover the next day was worth it) and they all raised their glasses in a toast. Even Satya did, though she declined alcohol in favor of the mug of tea in front of her. 

“Shit,” McCree said, finding himself unable to stand as they got ready to leave. 

“How do you think they’re going to get home?” he heard the bartender ask Satya. 

“It wouldn’t be team bonding without drunken adventures!” Sombra said with an impish smirk. Hana only noticed McCree’s second flinch because she had been looking at him as she reached for the glass of water the bartender had begun handing out. 

There was a loud ruckus behind them and they turned to find Reinhardt carrying the derby players, two under each arm. All four of them were sulking like children, a fact that they all found hilarious.

Except for Hanzo and Widowmaker, who had both passed out drunk, stacked on top of each other as they leaned against the bar. 

“Are you ready?” Reinhardt asked. “It’s getting late.” 

Satya stood, handing the book back to the bartender. “Thank you for lending me that - I will have to find the sequel.” She twisted her hands, blue light weaving between her fingers. “Carting them off the field, carting them out of the bar? What’s the difference?”

Knowing what’s coming, Hana and Brigitte giggled and clapped their hands. “Hardlight chariot!” 

The bartender sighed, beginning to clean up after her unruly customers to disguise how interested she was in this “hardlight chariot”. It turned out that the “hardlight chariot” was actually just a very large wheelbarrow. She watched as Sombra took charge of Moira and Reaper (who were clearly sulking) and Reinhardt began loading the wheelbarrow with the rest of his group, unconscious or not. 

She flinched back when the big man slapped down a large wad of money on the table. “Thank you for an excellent night!” he said and picking up the handles of the faintly glowing wheelbarrow, began carting his group -  _ literally _ \- away. Brigitte and Hana, propped up by the handles, giggled and waved to the bartender as they left. 

“Best team bonding  _ ever _ ,” Brigitte whispered to Hana who laughed, her smile fading a little when she saw McCree flinch again. 

“Next time we need to bring Min,” Hana whispered back. 


	16. Team-building exercises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a Tragic Backstory is introduced and McCree learns not to watch Min eat.

McCree smiled wanly at Hana as he walked into the kitchen. “Evenin’,” he said with a cheerfulness he didn’t feel. From the flat look on Hana’s face, she didn’t buy it but graciously didn’t say anything.

The strange smoke rabbit creature that had taken to following Hana around – one of the deathrabbits they had encountered down in the west wing of the base but one that Hana insisted was more or less harmless – flicked one of its ears toward him and twitched its nose. “Die, die, die,” it muttered as it crunched on a bowl of tortilla chips. Deeming him uninteresting, the ear flipped back to rest.

“I heard that bunnies love nothing more than fresh banana,” McCree commented. At the word  _ banana _ , the deathbunny flipped both of its ears forward and it tipped its head up.

Hana hummed. “That explains why he’s been eating through all of my banana chips.” At the same time, the hellbunny muttered, “ _ die, die, die _ ”.

“Does he always say that?” McCree asked, shuffling over to the coffee pot and staring mournfully at the syrupy dregs left in it. He sighed regretfully and set about rinsing it out to make a new pot.

“I don’t think he can  _ say _ anything else,” Hana said and McCree turned to watch as she drew her fingers through the hellbunny’s fur. “He makes little muttering sounds but they aren’t really  _ words _ .”

McCree nodded absently. “Does he have a name?”

“Min.” Hana watched him nod again. For all the attention he was paying her and Min, it wouldn’t have made a difference if she said his name or  _ Bob-ette the Impaler _ . Min twisted to look at her with an eye that briefly swirled to red before dissipating back to black.

Sighing, McCree flicked the “bew” switch (someone had tried to label the correct switch but had misspelled it…he suspected it was Junkrat but that opened up a whole other set of issues that he didn’t want to consider) and walked back to the table. With a flourish that made Min flinch in surprise he revealed the banana he had snagged from the fruit bowl on the counter. This he peeled and placed, whole, in the bowl in front of the hellrabbit. “So what brings you two here?” he asked.

Hana shrugged. “Usual stuff. Min helps but…I just needed some air.”

“You stole Hanzo’s tea again, didn’t you?” McCree asked, a wry smile on his face.

“You can’t prove it,” Hana teased back though like McCree’s, her smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. She sipped from her mug. “What about you?”

McCree shrugged and didn’t quite answer. They both watched as Min seemed to dissolve into a thick cloud of smoke and swirl around the bowl. “Is…that normal?” he asked faintly.

Hana shrugged. “You made him all excited,” she explained. “As long as you don’t watch his mouth when he eats, it’s fine. He only really does that when he’s really excited.” She paused. “He likes potatoes too. And squash. Most vegetables, really.”

They ignored that McCree didn’t answer her question – it was a formality, really, and not everyone wanted to answer since they all had some idea why most on the base were plagued with insomnia. Instead, Hana said, “Did you enjoy skating?”

McCree gave a ragged chuckle. “It was an experience,” he said. “But I enjoyed it.”

“We should do group events more often,” Hana agreed. “Although it would be nice if they  _ weren’t _ hijacking what was  _ supposed _ to be a date.”

They shared a laugh. “And if Talon didn’t ruin it.” he paused. “Well, if rivalries didn’t get into it. I could’ve done without the brawl, myself.”

“Sombra posted some of the videos online,” Hana admitted. “It wasn’t  _ too  _ terrible, actually. And there wasn’t a whole lot of damage to the rink.”

“That’s good,” McCree agreed. “We could use all the PR we can get.”

Hana snorted but didn’t say anything more. They both watched Min coalesce back into a rabbit shape. The banana was gone but the chips remained and he daintily began picking one up in his jaws. Remembering Hana’s words, McCree didn’t look at the hellrabbit’s mouth and instead looked at the coffee pot.

“McCree,” she said cautiously. “Did you enjoy…going out as a team?”

For all the cowboy acted like a slow, lazy fellow he tended to be much sharper than he appeared. “We did it in the old days,” he said. “Didn’t much care for it.”

Hana made a face. “I don’t want to upset you,” she said. “Now or later.”

Instead of answering right away, McCree stood and poured himself a mug of coffee. He added a generous helping of whiskey from a flask he pulled from his hip. “Ain’t...it ain’t  _ really _ going out with the team,” he said as he heaved himself back into his chair. He jabbed a metal finger at the hellrabbit when it seemed to eye him judgmentally. “Hush, you.”

“Mph,” it muttered and resumed crunching its chip.

“So it’s not the team bonding itself,” Hana said musingly. McCree flinched but halfheartedly tried to hide it as he sipped his mug. “Ah.”

McCree sighed and lifted up his prosthetic hand. “ _ This _ is why I flinch when I hear those words.”

Staring at the arm, Hana nodded. It was hard to imagine a team-bonding event going so wrong as to cause loss of limbs but…but if the late Jack Morrison was involved, she could see how it could go that way – just look at how the Skating Incident went!

She didn’t want to ask – it was one of the unofficial rules of the Insomnia Club – but  _ damn _ was she curious. No doubt seeing or sensing her curiosity, McCree gave her a crooked smile and opened his flask. “Gonna need a little more for this conversation,” he told her. “But…ain’t too opposed, I s’ppose.”

Min’s ears pricked up curiously and he nudged his bowl in front of Hana and then scrambled down into her lap so he could peer at McCree over the edge of the table. Laughing, McCree stood up to get another glass for his whiskey. When he returned with the glass, he also brought along a bowl of fruits and vegetables from the pantry, a small paring knife, and a cutting board.

“Figured we could all use a snack,” McCree said as he poured himself a generous helping of whiskey. He gestured to her with the knife. “Now don’t you two be talkin’ to Genji ‘bout this, ya hear? He was pretty fucked up ‘bout it. Had t’ go t’ a therapist ‘n all. Probably how he first met Zen.”

Hana nodded and mimed zipping her mouth shut and throwing away the key. Min muttered, “Mumf…die die die.”

They both looked down at him, back up at each other, and shrugged. “Good enough for me,” McCree said. “It started when Genji n’ I were in Overwatch-”

“I thought you two were in Blackwatch.”

McCree paused, cocking his head to the side. He flicked a piece of celery at Min and flinched when a piece of his body separated, tentacle-like, to snatch it out of the air. It didn’t bring it to his mouth to eat but instead somehow seemed to consume it by some other means.

“I told you not to watch him eat,” Hana said after a long pause.

“No,” McCree said slowly. “You said not to watch his  _ mouth _ .”

Hana shrugged. “Potato, potahto, Eldritch demon rabbit.”

Shaking his head, McCree began cutting the rest of his bowl, occasionally flicking a few toward Min and Hana and sometimes eating pieces himself. “Nah, Genji n’ I  _ were _ in Blackwatch, but sometimes they loaned us out to Overwatch.”

“That seems…unfair.”

McCree chuckled a little bitterly. “Different kind’a unfair than what yer thinkin’,” he said. “But yes, it was.”

“Was it…common for Overwatch to borrow Blackwatch operatives?” Hana wanted to know.

“Different tool fer a different job,” McCree said with a shrug. “Not common, but not  _ uncommon _ either.” Hana nodded in agreement and sipped her tea. Picking up a chip, she offered it to Min who…ate it. Somehow. Neither of them wanted to think about it. McCree took a long sip of his whiskey and poured himself another few fingers. He switched and took another long drink from his coffee mug.

They both paused when Soldier 76 walked in. Fortunately he didn’t seem too inclined to stay long; while McCree silently cut up more vegetables for Min and Hana, he poured himself a mug of coffee and shuffled, zombie-like, away.

“Thing is,” Mccree said once he left. “We were on loan for so long that they kinda forgot about us. So when it came time for a…um…” he waved vaguely and Hana nodded. “We were invited along.” He paused to take another deep drink first of his whiskey and then his coffee. “Bet you can guess how well that went.”

Min sneezed and they both looked down at him. He flattened his ears. “Die, die, die.”

“More or less,” McCree agreed. “No one died but there were…a few injuries.”

There was more to that story but Hana knew that she was already treading on thin ice. She absently ran her fingers through Min’s wispy, smoky fur and stayed silent.

McCree had a crooked smile when he continued. “But that’s what you get when ya drag two black ops agents to competitive paintball.”

Hana froze – even Min froze, his ears pricked forward attentively. As if ignorant of their reaction (a lie because they could see the half-smirk nearly hidden by his bristly beard), McCree continued to casually cut up the fruit and vegetables in his bowl.

“That…can’t have gone well,” Hana managed to squeak out at last.

The smile that McCree gave the knife in his hands as he cut would have frozen her blood. As it was, Min seemed wispier than usual, a typical sign that he was nervous. She reminded herself that despite his typical laid-back and easy-going attitude, McCree  _ was _ extremely deadly and an ex-black ops agent on par (or almost) with the literal ninjas on their team.

“Oh no,” he assured her. “It certainly didn’t.” Seeing her expression, his own face softened. He raised his prosthetic hand. “ _ I lost my fucking hand _ .”

As he clearly meant her to, she giggled though it was a little nervous and he flicked pieces of celery and carrot toward her and Min. “Lost your hand to paintball?”

McCree threw his head back and laughed. “Well buckle up, kiddo,” he said and a note of his usual mirth was back in his voice. His eyes were a little misty though, as if he was trapped in a memory he couldn’t escape from; his smile had a hard, cold edge to it. “Have I got a story for you – The Great Paintball Incident and the last time I could hear… _ those words _ …without flinching.”


	17. 7 dead and 3 in critical condition

_ You should talk to your cowboy _ , Hana had said with her arms full of her strange smoke rabbit creature.  _ He hasn’t been sleeping very well _ .

It was an unspoken rule around base that aside from providing company and comfort when needed, you didn’t ask about the rest of the team’s problems. Even if McCree had shared such information with Hana, she would not have told him anyway but that she was concerned about McCree -  _ Jesse _ \- was telling to Hanzo. 

_ I will _ , he had assured her. 

Athena let him into Jesse’s quarters without a fuss, strange since he hadn’t been there for some time but it wouldn’t surprise Hanzo if the cowboy -  _ his _ , according to the rules of the base,  _ his _ cowboy - had given Hanzo additional permissions to his room. 

“Howdy,” McCree said without turning over on his bed. 

“Hello,” Hanzo replied quietly. 

Hanzo watched McCree shuffle, rolling over to peer at him. “Long time no see.”

“Hana is worried for you,” Hanzo said and flinched. “I am too.

On the bed, Jesse huffed. “She would. We…talked the other night.”

“You haven’t been sleeping,” Hanzo realized, peering closer at Jesse.

“Ain’t been sleepin’ right since…for a while now.”

Hanzo took a hesitant step forward and stopped, unsure of his welcome. When Jesse neither said nor did anything, he took another step forward. “Do…do you want to talk about it?”

“Seems like you ain’t wantin’ t’ talk,” Jesse said a little sullenly. He turned his head so that he was staring straight up at the ceiling. 

Looking down in shame, Hanzo watched Jesse play with his fingers. He was shirtless in preparation for bed and Hanzo traced the shape of his body with his eyes, swells and divots and patches of hair and scars that he had mapped out a hundred times before – but that seemed like a lifetime ago. Hanzo took a cautious step forward: the skin around McCree’s prosthetics was red and inflamed.

“When was the last time you took that off?” Hanzo found himself asking.

Jesse snorted. “I don’t see why you’d know anything about that,” he said rather sharply. His face fell and he turned to Hanzo. “I’m sorry,” he said immediately. “That…that was cruel of me.” Hanzo watched his eyes fall to his legs, hidden by sweatpants despite the warm summer night.

After a moment of awkward silence, Hanzo wiggled one foot out of the soft shoes he wore and placed his bare “foot” on the edge of the bed. Tugging the leg of his sweatpants up above his knee, he revealed the metallic mesh “skin” of his own prosthetic. The segmented metatarsal joints and support struts of his foot – which looked a lot like a human foot covered in a sock – wiggled.

Jesse’s eyes traced the smooth curves, the tiny ankles and the swell of his false calf up to the almost bulky clasps that attached the prosthesis to the remains of Hanzo’s leg. Almost before he could stop himself he reached out to touch it – as he had done what felt like hundreds of times a thousand years ago – and stopped just short.

“When was the last time you took them off?” Jesse asked quietly, flinching back when he saw the way Hanzo’s skin was bruised and inflamed at the edge of the prosthetic. “When was the last time you…” he trailed off, tugging his hand back. “Sorry.”

Hanzo huffed. “Scoot over,” he said. “Unless you are uncomfortable with me being here?”

“Woulda had Athena wipe your permissions,” McCree said, wiggling back to make space on the small cot.

“I will make you a deal,” Hanzo said, sitting down at the edge of the bed and leaning down to roll up the other leg of his sweatpants. “If you take off yours, I will take off mine.”

Jesse watched the way Hanzo’s muscles rippled beneath the thin shirt he wore, heard him hiss in pain when he dug his thumbs into the muscles of his thigh. “You’re playin’ dirty,” Jesse muttered.

“I’m taking a gamble,” Hanzo replied, still not looking at Jesse. “And…seeing how welcome I am.”

“Always,” Jesse said, gently brushing Hanzo’s back with his fingertips, all he could reach. He sighed when Hanzo didn’t move except to press cruelly into the inflamed muscle of his leg and hiss in pain again. “Alright,” he said. “Take those off and I’ll take off mine; it’s killin’ me to see you doin’ that.”

He watched Hanzo’s back as he leaned down again to fiddle with his prosthetics; a moment later there was a soft hiss as it released. When Hanzo turned to look at him, Jesse fiddled with his arm and released it as well, putting the heavy thing on the bedside table.

“Join me?” he asked hopefully, patting the bed beside him with his whole hand. If he had any shame left he would have been embarrassed at the broken sound he made when not only did Hanzo lie down next to him but also curled up against him, wrapping a large arm beneath Jesse’s head and the other around his ribs, tugging him close.

“Is this okay?” Hanzo asked quietly.

With another soft sound, Jesse buried his face into Hanzo’s chest, wrapping his truncated arm around Hanzo’s hip. “This is  _ perfect _ ,” he whispered with feeling, voice muffled.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Hanzo whispered into Jesse’s hair an undetermined amount of time later.

Jesse breathed a shaky sigh. “You and your guilt,” he mumbled. “Ain’t  _ yer  _ fault.”

His hair ruffled when Hanzo sighed and squeezed him closer. “It feels like it is,” he admitted, running the fingers of his hand soothingly through Jesse’s hair. “I wasn’t here for you.”

“You’re here now,” Jesse said, relaxing into his boy-…into Hanzo’s gentle touches. “That’s what matters.”

Hanzo hummed. “I’m here,” he agreed. “And…if you want to talk about it – if you  _ need _ to talk about it…I will listen.”

For a long moment, Jesse was quiet. “I won’t put you through that,” he said softly, burying his face further into Hanzo’s chest. He sighed when Hanzo brushed his fingers soothingly over the back of his neck. “Can’t ask y’ to do that.”

“You’re not asking me to,” Hanzo murmured. “But…I’m here for you. If you want to talk about it.” He paused. “Hana…mentioned that you were upset.”

Jesse snorted and tugged Hanzo closer by his truncated arm wrapped around the archer’s waist. “Ain’t been sleepin’ well,” he admitted.

“For how long?”

For some reason this question didn’t raise the annoyance it did when Ange asked him. It was probably the gentle massage of Hanzo’s fingers against his scalp and the soothing drum of his heart beneath Jesse’s ear; it was probably feeling Hanzo’s breath ruffling his hair, the feeling of his body pressing against Jesse’s.

“Ain’t been sleeping right my whole life,” Jesse muttered drowsily into Hanzo’s chest. It was easier talking like this, where he couldn’t meet Hanzo’s eyes and see judgment or worse, pity. He couldn’t help the quick, lovesick smile that flashed across his face when Hanzo tugged on a pinch of hair. The words were just on the tip of his tongue and it was only through great effort that he swallowed them back.

Now was not the time for the L-word.

“It got worse after…skating,” Jesse admitted.

“Was it not enjoyable?” Hanzo murmured and Jesse grinned, light and quick against his chest.

“It was,” he agreed quickly. “Even taking care of you when we got back just…hearing Jack…” He buried his face further in Hanzo’s chest and gripped him as tight as he could with his prosthetic arm. “A… _ certain event _ …was how I lost my arm. An event…that brings people closer together.”

Hanzo made a soft noise of understanding and his fingers resumed carding themselves through McCree’s hair. “Do you…want to talk about it?”

“Only if you don’t stop,” McCree hummed, relaxing into the gentle press of Hanzo’s fingers in his hair.

He could feel the soft smile curling the archer’s lips as he pressed them to Jesse’s forehead. “Never,” he promised.

 

 

-*-*-* -*-*-*

Jesse held his cupped hand to protect the flame of the lighter as he lit his cigarillo. Next to him, Genji looks particularly murderous. “ _ Well this is dumb, _ ” he murdered to his fellow Blackwatch operative in Japanese. 

Genji’s red eyes flicked toward him. “ _ So is your face _ .” Jesse snorted. 

“Hey!” Carson protested. “You can't light that in here! That's disgusting.”

Jesse took a long drag of his cigarillo and exhaled just to watch Carson’s eyes bulge. “ _ It feels like we're being kidnapped, _ ” he commented to Genji who grunted in agreement and turned as if to stare out the blacked-out windows of the van. In English he said, “Well I'd open a window but…”

“NO!” Morrison yelled from the front and did a double-take in the mirror. “Jesse, Genji, what are you doing here? And put that out!”

Grumbling to himself, Jesse took another deep drag of is cigarillo and then sighed the smoke out in a rush. To everyone’s surprise, it was Genji that responded without turning his head away from the blacked-out windows. “You threatened to shoot us if we didn’t get in the van.”

One of the other Overwatch operatives snorted. “Some Blackwatch operatives you are,” she sneered. “I thought you weren’t afraid of anything?”

Jesse rolled his eyes and ashed his cigarillo in her direction, ignoring the way she shrieked when some got on her crisp white pants .  Whoever thought that making their “dress blues” more white than blue had to have been colorblind...or something. But too many times had he tried to find the logic behind having a mostly-white dress uniform and he wasn’t in the mood for that kind of headache today . 

“Naw,” he said when it seemed that Genji’s uncharacteristic bout of chattiness had ended. “We’ve just got standing orders by the guy that’s  _ really _ in charge not to let Jackie mess up his pretty face too much.” 

There was a creak from the front as Morrison gripped the wheel with white knuckles.  “Hush,” he said. “We’re here.”

A moment later the van slid to a stop and the doors opened as Morrison hopped out, moving to stand by a few crates. 

The agents all looked around. McCree groaned as he unfolded from his cramped position. A sign nearby said: SKIRMISH PAINTBALL. He and Genji traded glances. 

“Torbjörn upgraded your gear,” Morrison said, gesturing to the crate next to him. “We spared no expense to make sure that you were able to get gear that was familiar to you; the Engineering department made identical copies of your primary weapons.”

McCree and Genji traded glances as boxes of equipment were passed out. The gunslinger got a box with a shitty replica of Peacekeeper, a few canisters of paint pellets and a bandolier of modified flashbangs. Genji’s box had a plastic handgun and McCree struggled not to laugh at the ninja’s red-eyed stare.

“ _ This is stupid _ ,” Genji muttered to McCree who grunted in agreement.

“Okay,” Morrison said while everyone kitted up.

“You all know the rules. Shoot to kill. That’s all.”

_ “Well that’s a mite unsettling.”  _ Jesse hissed out of the corner of his mouth to Genji, who nodded his agreement. 

__

Two hours later they were pinned down behind a case of crates, narrowly dodging a shot from fucking  _ Carson  _ and dammit, they were on the same side. But nooo, apparently everyone took their cues from the fucking mouthbreather, and the friendlier fire was actually coming from the “enemy team”. Leave it to Jack to make a clusterfucking mess out of-

Jesse froze as, somewhere nearby, an explosion went off with enough force to shake the ground. The shooting didn’t stop. 

Jesse ground his teeth.

“Genji.”

“Yes?”

“What do you think the odds are that Jack fundamentally misunderstood the point of paintball? Or that he just told Torb to make grenades with paint in them?”

Another earth-shattering bang went off, closer this time, answering before the cyborg could. Jesse groaned, slamming his head into the crates that were providing them cover. 

“Of all the lousy days to get stuck out on assignment with-”

“-JESSE-”

The explosion was just to their left, impossible to tell which side had thrown the grenade. Jesse scrambled out of the way, getting doused in dirt.

“Whew, that one was-”

“ _ Heads up, motherfucker!” _

Ah.

Carson.

__

 

 

“So.” Mccree spread his hands, palms up in placation.

“Couple people died, bunch of others in critical condition, including yours truly, and Genji got his new robot bod and got the fuck out shortly after.”

Hanzo took a very deep breath, held it for a few seconds and then very slowly exhaled through his nose. “Glossing over the fact that you somehow lost your arm  _ while playing paintball _ -”

“ _ Competitive _ paintball,” McCree protested, unable to help the dopey smile on his lps. Despite his sharp words, Hanzo’s voice was almost teasing. “With two covert ops agents, but yes.”

He could feel Hanzo rolling his eyes and wiggled closer. “Ridiculous cowman.” His hands carded through McCree’s hair. “Is that…?” McCree could hear his heavy swallow. “Is that why…?”

“Yeah,” McCree agreed.

Hanzo made a considering noise in his throat. “I’m sorry it causes you such distress but...I’m glad you’re here.”  _ Where you belong _ , McCree hoped to hear but Hanzo didn’t say it. He thought it remained unsaid between them but he couldn’t tell anymore. 

Smiling, Jesse leaned closer and sighed contentedly. “Me too.”

And meant it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy shit we fucked up on remembering to update. Sorry for the massive delay, y'all


	18. Saying I love you

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which licking occurs in a mostly non-sexual fashion

McCree stared at himself in the mirror. “You can do this,” he told himself sternly, gripping the edges of the sink with the only hand he had remaining. “Don’t be such a wuss - it’s just a few words!”

But they weren’t, that was the thing. 

They weren’t just  _ any _ careless combination of words - they were  _ the _ words. 

He swallowed hard and stared at himself in the mirror. “Nope,” he said firmly then flinched, turning to look guiltily at the closed door as if he could see through it into the other room. “No,” he said softer, staring himself down in the mirror. “Just a few words.”

Steeling himself, he opened the door and peeked out. Hanzo was still sleeping, starfished across the bed. His hair was splayed around him like a corona, his silver streaks appearing to glitter in the light of the early morning sun. He didn’t snore but he  _ did _ sleep with his mouth slightly open, allowing a thin line of drool to bubble out over his lips and into the hairs of his beard. 

Unable to help himself McCree felt a silly, dopey smile split his face. As if sensing the weight of his gaze, Hanzo’s spread arms began contracting, curling closer and Jesse hurried over as quietly as possible, slotting himself into place at Hanzo’s back. 

“Shh,” he whispered into the hairs at the nape of Hanzo’s neck. “I gotcha.” 

Hanzo shifted with a grunt and then fell still again. One of his arms clasped Jesse’s wrist and tugged him closer and Mccree felt himself melt.  _ It can wait _ , he thought to himself and closed his eyes. 

*-*-*-*

Things almost went back to normal. 

It was as if something had passed between them during that night where Jesse finally confessed what had been eating at him. The taboo subject of their fallout hadn’t been brought up but the edges of it had been touched, like fingers tapping the edge of a spill to see if the paint was still wet. 

The paint  _ was _ still wet and the words didn’t quite pass between them but Jesse wanted to believe that they knew, that everything was okay again. But that was how they got into this mess, thinking that the same words had been passed between them. 

So Jesse had a plan. 

It was a good plan, borne of what felt like a thousand nights spent away from his darling. Of days and nights that he wished Hanzo was with him, in his arms, beside him, heck in the same room as him! It was borne of a thousand dreams of dinners and lunches and picnics and after-mission sessions of whatever came from the burning realization of  _ oh shit we almost died _ . 

He planned it out very carefully, reading the moods of his dearest as well as he was able to (which clearly wasn’t  _ the best _ given the situation he had gotten himself into, but he was trying, dang it). 

Okay, to be fair Jesse cheated  _ a little _ and ordered takeout but it was from Hanzo’s favorite place. It was difficult to get the paella from town up into the base without arousing suspicion, but he figured that some form of divine force had intervened and he made it back to his quarters unmolested. (It was another kind of hell to get the paella to fit in the mini-fridge in his suite. The restaurant served up  _ enormous _ portions and his mini-fridge was quite small…)

The next step was to clean up. He picked up all of his clothes and did the laundry, vacuumed the carpets (what little there were) and scrubbed the tile and wood flooring. Five bags of trash ( _ how did he have this much trash?! _ ) and a few pulled muscles in his back and hamstrings later, his suite could almost pass as neat.

He nearly shrieked when he found Hana’s strange smoke-rabbit creature sitting on the counter. Keeping his eyes on the thing as much as possible, he shot a quick message to Hana over the comms to collect her Eldritch  _ creature _ from his room,  _ please _ .

“What’cha doing?” Hana asked when she arrived, popping her gum obnoxiously as she looked around his cleaned room. She made grabby hands at the smoke monster which dissolved, drifted through the air toward her, and formed again in her arms. The two of them stared judgmentally at Jesse who crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s all clean for once.”

Jesse snorted. “Well if you  _ must _ know,” he said, thinking himself rather clever. “I’m takin’ Han on a date tonight out in town.” He watched smugly as Hana’s eyes lit up before she schooled her face into a look of careful indifference. “Hopin’ to get lucky later.”

As expected, Hana wrinkled her nose. “ _ Gross _ ,” she cried.

“ _ Die, die, die, _ ” the creature in her arms said and Jesse froze, staring down at it. He’d heard it “speak” before but every time it took him by surprise at how eerie it was.

Hana snorted. “You tell him,” she said and hefted it in her arms again. “Let’s go, Min.”

As soon as she was gone, he pulled out his phone to send Hanzo a quick message:  _ wanna get dinner later? _

Hanzo’s reply was immediate.  _ What time? _

Biting his lip, Jesse checked the time. If it was 1400 now…he needed some time to rest and get ready.  _ 1800? Meet at my place? _

Hanzo sent back a thumbs-up and Jesse couldn’t help the silly grin that split his face. A moment later he said,  _ Out with my brother today. Wish me luck _ .

Laughing, Jesse sent him a handful of heart emojis and a few kissing ones. Lifting his arm, he took a whiff and made a face. “I reek,” he muttered. “Who knew cleaning could be so  _ difficult _ ?”

Stripping – and putting his dirty clothes in the hamper and not strewn out over the ground – Jesse stepped into the shower to wipe off the grime and sweat from cleaning. With his hair still wet and dressed only in a pair of old boxers, he stretched out over the couch and closed his eyes.

He woke up an undetermined amount of time later to the shrill sounds of the small microwave in his suite. With a startled yelp he fell off the couch and looked around as his phone, which had been resting on his belly as he napped, skittered away.

Looking around, he realized that it was completely dark out – night had fallen, meaning that he was late to his own goddamn date.

Scrambling to his feet in a panic, he spun when he heard the door to his microwave open. Hanzo stood in his little kitchenette, dressed in a dusty blue button-down shirt and a pair of jeans that looked more like they were painted on.

“Calm down,” Hanzo said with a little laugh.

Jesse ran his hand through his hair and made a little distressed noise when he realized how messy it had dried. He also found a line of spit that made the bristles of his beard dry in weird shapes and realized that he was dressed only in a very plain pair of boxers.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” Hanzo said, mixing the bowl in his hands briskly. He covered it again and tucked it into the microwave. Soon the roar of it echoed in the room as Hanzo crossed over to where Jesse was now sitting up.

“Shit,” Jesse said into his hands. “I’m so sorry, darlin’?”

“Why?” Hanzo asked, sliding into his spot at his side. He tucked an arm around Jesse’s, resting his palm on his forearm.

Jesse swallowed a lump in his throat. “I had it all planned out,” he blurted. “I was gonna make everythin’ all nice. Got your favorite paella from town an’ was going to set the table and make it all nice…” he trailed off, realizing that Hanzo was laughing.

“I’m sorry,” Hanzo said, leaning into Jesse’s side. “I don’t mean to laugh.”

“It’s okay,” Jesse sighed, letting his hands fall. “I’m a damned fool.”

Hanzo chucked and curled the knuckle of his free hand under Jesse’s chin. “But you’re…my fool.” Jesse perked up at the hitch in Hanzo’s voice, the briefest hesitation. He let himself be pulled in for a short, surprisingly sweet kiss and smiled. “Go get dressed, my fool,” Hanzo said when they parted. “And I will finish warming up our dinner.”

Leaning in, Jesse stole another kiss, humming at the feeling of Hanzo’s warm lips against his, before standing and obeying. Even though Hanzo had seen him in various states of undress, Jesse still grabbed his clothes and ducked into the bathroom to get ready.

“Go away,” Hanzo was saying when Jesse emerged.

The weird smoke rabbit of Hana’s was back and appeared to be begging for treats from Hanzo. “Brat,” Jesse told the creature who turned its head at an unnatural angle to look at him. “ _ Creepy _ brat,” he amended. “Go on, git. If you’re good you can come back later and I’ll give you some food, but right now you’re not allowed in here.”

The creature huffed. “ _ Die _ ,” it muttered.

Hanzo’s smile suddenly turned predatory. He leaned down, cupping his hands around his mouth, and murmured something into the creature’s perked ears. It regarded him shrewdly (or as shrewd as a creature like it could appear) before bouncing. Wisps of grey-black smog rippled off its body, curling like the tentacles of an anemone.

“I promised it a small bowl now,” Hanzo told Jesse as he fetched the promised cookware. “And a larger one tomorrow morning if it keeps us from being interrupted.”

Jesse laughed. “That’s a tall order.”

Bravely (or stupidly, in Jesse’s opinion), Hanzo reached down and wiggled his fingers in the curling smoke of the creature’s “fur”. It wiggled its nose and reared up, pressing its head into Hanzo’s bare palm as if soliciting pets.

“Perhaps,” Hanzo said with a tender smile on his face that made Jesse melt. “But Min is quite clever.” He stood and made a small bowl of paella which he placed on the ground, stepping back when the creature dissolved into smoke and swarmed around the bowl. “It’s best not to watch him eat,” Hanzo said, stepping around the swirling black cloud to press himself against Jesse’s chest. “I have better things for you to be doing.”

Jesse could take a hint and relaxed into Hanzo’s hold, gently drawing him into another soft kiss. Behind them they could hear the bowl rattle and then fall still, then, “ _ die die die _ .” When they turned around, they caught the last few wisps of the creature as it slipped beneath the crack of the door.

“We’ll just have to wait and see, now,” Hanzo said against Jesse’s lips, parting to pick up the bowl. It had been wiped clean and he put it very carefully into the sink as if afraid it would bite back. He turned around and smiled at Jesse. “Dinner?”

-*-*-*

Jesse  _ had _ a plan, but this was so much better.

They ate more paella than they probably should, stealing mussels and chorizo and clams from each other’s plates playfully. When they were done, they cuddled up on the couch and queued up a movie.

“Han?” Jesse asked after a long moment of silence.

Hanzo shifted in his arms. “Mmm?”

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Jesse squeezed Hanzo tighter. “I missed you.”

Much to his displeasure, Hanzo pulled away to look at Jesse properly. In the bluish light cast by the holo-screen, his eyes seemed dark, lit by the reflection of the screen like stars. His face was flushed and sleepy and there was a red mark and subtle textures pressed into his skin from where he had pressed it against Jesse’s chest. Hanzo’s hair was messy, strands struggling to escape the hold of the practical black elastic tie that kept it in a neat topknot behind his head and now it wobbled off-center and loose.

When Hanzo blinked and a faint blush crossed his face, Jesse realized that he had been staring, mouth parted, as he tried to take in all of the little details before it was taken away from him again.

Hanzo pressed his head back down, nudging his nose under Jesse’s chin. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, his breath puffing against Jesse’s neck.

“Don’t be,” Jesse replied after a moment to work the lump out of his throat. He trailed the fingers of his flesh hand along the dip in Hanzo’s spine, tracing the wrinkles in the fabric of his button-down shirt. “I just missed you, is all.”

“I missed you too,” Hanzo said into his neck, humming when Jesse continued to pet him. “You’ll put me to sleep.”

Jesse paused, suddenly hesitant. “Do you…” he cleared his throat. “You’re welcome to stay the night if…if that’s what you want.”

“I do,” Hanzo hummed. “But I don’t want to go to sleep just yet.”

Allowing himself to smile, Jesse ran his fingers up and down Hanzo’s back again. They fell into silence again as the movie continued.

“Han?” he asked. He cleared his throat. “Hanzo?”

The archer lifted his head again and propped himself up on his forearms to properly look down at Jesse. Now the drowsiness was gone from his eyes and he met Jesse’s eyes with a seriousness that made his heart do flips – and not in a good way.

Jesse swallowed and lifted a hand to cup Hanzo’s cheek. “You know…you know that I’m yours, right?” clearly Hanzo hadn’t expected that, judging by the surprised blink. “Outside…outside of the Rules…I’m yours.” He swallowed again, suddenly nervous and embarrassed beneath Hanzo’s hard stare. “That is…if you still want me, of course.”

He jumped when one of Hanzo’s hands leaped up to tangle with his, turning his head further into the palm cupping his chin. “Of course,” he said very softly but with a small touch of amusement to his voice. “Dragons are very territorial, you know, and we hoard our treasure.”

“Aw,” Jesse said with a shaky smile. “I ain’t no treasure.”

Hanzo chuckled and tipped his head back to brush his lips with a very soft kiss. “You are to me.”

Jesse chuckled against Hanzo’s lips. “Sap.”

“For you,” Hanzo murmured back as he pulled away. He shifted so that he sat astride Jesse’s waist and stared regally down at him.

“If this is the throne on which you sit, I could get used to this,” Jesse joked, letting his hands fall on Hanzo’s hips. He rubbed his thumbs soothingly over the jut of bone of Hanzo’s pelvis, not caring that he looked like such a fool staring up at him with a dopey grin.

Hanzo smiled. “I could too,” he admitted and leaned down to press a soft kiss to the tip of Jesse’s nose. “But it goes both ways, you know?”

Chasing Hanzo’s lips, Jesse paused and let himself fall back into the couch cushions. “Hm?”

“I’d…like to be yours as well.” And Hanzo looked so gently hopeful that Jesse felt as if his breath had been stolen.

“Shoot,” Jesse said wistfully. “I’d like that very much.”

Hanzo’s grin was blinding and he leaned down to kiss Jesse again before offering his neck. It took a few seconds to get what he meant – to remember Genji’s frantic texts to  _ LICK, L I C K  _ his brother – but he obeyed the wordless request, pressing a kiss to the curve of Hanzo’s jaw. The kiss was followed by teeth, worrying a bite into the soft flesh as Hanzo hissed and gasped above him in surprise. Then followed the lick – what Hanzo had been waiting for.

Very slowly Hanzo pulled back, his cheeks flush. His grin was wicked as he leaned down.

“I love you,” Jesse blurted out and he froze above him, his eyes wide.

Then he leaned down again and pressed his lips against Jesse’s ear. “I love you too.”


	19. Sexual Tension

Hanzo was in the kitchen with Fareeha, which was not unusual. Complaining- which was....also not unusual. But he’d gone on an unusually long frustrated rag about his brother leaving a mess after cooking hotpot, and Fareeha was tired of him beating around the bush.

“Okay, so what actually happened?”

Hanzo paused, mid-rant about soy sauce stains. He seemed to struggle for a moment, the Egyptian watching him over the brim of her tea as she took a long sip. He sighed.

“I received a.....verbal demerit. Earlier.”

Pharah raised a single, perfect, eyebrow.

“For what.”

“Sexual tension.”

She nodded, understanding. She’d run afoul of that one a few times. 

“I simply do not understand how I am supposed to comply with a ban on  _ sexual tension. _ ”

Fareeha snorted.

“Well, you don’t.”

Hanzo got eerily still, and pharah froze, trying to figure out what she’d said wrong.

“I- don’t?”

“Um. Yeah? I mean, you don’t actually have to follow the rules. Not those, anyway. ”

“I see.”

His deadly tone made Pharah very sure he didn’t, but he walked out before she could cut in. She watched him go with bewilderment. What was THAT about?

* * *

When an hour had passed and Hanzo had not only not returned, but McCree had come dashing through like a whirlwind looking for him, Pharah decided that it was time to take more extreme measures, and go and see her mother. 

* * *

“-and then he just walked out. Got all cold. Didn’t think any more of it, but then Jesse comes running through looking for him, and I passed Genji in the hallway rushing somewhere. I worry something may have gone wrong.”

Ana nodded thoughtfully, pouring herself another cup of tea. 

“It is as I suspected.”

“What do you mean?”

Ana blew at her tea, the steam framing her features like a witch leaning over her cauldron. Then she cracked a smile.

“You, my dear, have fucked up.”

* * *

Hanzo felt rather than heard the person climbing the ladder up to the watchtower, but still found himself surprised when a wizened hand reached over the edge to grab the railing on the platform. Ana’s head poked up and shot him a wide grin.

“Help an old woman up, won’t you?”

Hanzo eyed her dubiously, thinking of the 500 feet she’d just scaled to get up to the platform, but it was only polite. He gave her a hand. 

She settled next to him, pulling out the teakettle and cups she’d concealed somewhere on her person (though Hanzo would not possibly imagine where) and pouring them both a cup of tea. Hanzo braced himself, but for a long while she just sat next to him, and he had almost let his guard down when she finally spoke.

“I hear that you took your conversation with my daughter earlier rather badly.”

Hanzo snorted, something cold and uncomfortable curling in his chest. He took a deep breath, reminding himself that it was only Ana. She would understand.

“I feel like a fool.”

Ana only hummed, pouring him more tea as she waited for him to continue. Hanzo huffed, taking another sip, but between the two of them he knew she would win if he tried to wait her out. They would be up here until he admitted to everything.

“It is like...a joke was played on me, only I have played it on myself. I have embarrassed myself in front of McCree and...been upset with him. For nothing.”

Ana set her tea down, turning to look at Hanzo, holding him in place with her stare.

“Why do you think we have people sign those packets?” Her tone was gentle. Hanzo mulled it over, and then shrugged.

“A....what do you call it. Initiation? Hazing, I believe, as Jesse once said?”

Ana actually snorted.

“You think we would haze Jack Morrison?”

Hanzo mulled that one over a little longer. No, that didn’t quite sound right.   
“But then-”

Ana waved him off, anticipating his question.

“They aren’t quite rules, either, dear. Nothing so steadfast. They’re simply...customs. Traditions.”

“...Oh.” Hanzo’s expression cleared, and he nodded resolutely. He understood the importance of tradition.

“So I have not acted improperly.”

“Well, no, but-”

Hanzo was no longer listening. He stood, bowed to Ana, and leapt off of the platform. Ana watched him go, frowning a little to herself, and took another sip of tea. She’d meant to explain that some of the rules had been specifically to punish Jack and Gabriel for carrying on, and also to mention that licking things was reserved to  _ objects. _

Ah, well. She was sure they’d figure it out. 

Probably. She liked to think that they were fully-functioning adults but really she knew better.

She sighed, pouring herself another cup of tea, adding a shot of Zarya’s favorite vodka, and lifting it in a toast.

“To tradition.”

She downed it, and then peered back down over the edge of the platform. That was a...rather long way down, and she’d taken a few more drinks on her way to speaking with Hanzo, as she’d thought it would go worse. She pondered the ground for a moment, and then hit her com speed-dial.

“Fareeha dear, do you think you could give your old mother a lift?”


	20. A Murder Most Foul

_ Helly wasn’t so bad so long as you didn’t look too closely at him _ , McCree mused. He sat at one of the tables in the dining room, his bum leg propped up on the chair next to him. One elbow was propped on the table and his cheek held up by that fist; with his prosthetic hand, he fed scraps of food from his meal to the smoke monster and watched it disappear.

“Should I even be feeding you quesadillas?” he asked the demon rabbit as its head reformed. It had split into five petal-like mandibles to… _ consume _ a chunk that McCree hadn’t cut quite small enough. “There’s cheese and chili mayo and chicken in here. That can’t be good for you.”

The hellbunny flipped its ears forward before letting drop back into a comfortable rest. “ _ Die, die, die _ ,” it whispered.

McCree snorted and flipped another piece of quesadilla into the air. He watched, his stomach churning a little, as it seemed to lose all shape and dissolve into an eldritch thing of writhing black tentacles and too-many scarlet eyes. Once it caught the piece of quesadilla in the curls of one of its many black tentacles, it drew it in like an octopus pulling in its prey and returned to its typical shape. He reared back on his hind legs and rubbed its paws against its whiskers.

“You’re a freak,” he informed the demon-creature, though it was fond. Helly knew what he meant, anyway.

Helly dissolved into smoke and slithered over to him, forming up between his arms so that when it stood, its nose was in his face. He chuckled when his twitching whiskers tickled his face and offered his free hand. The top half of the demon rabbit dissolved and swept over his hands, cleaning it of crumbs, lingering grease, and smears of sauce and sour cream.

“Well if you get sick, at least have the decency to do it when Hana gets back,” Jesse said, wiggling his fingers in the mist. It felt like a cool fog against his skin and he knew that too long in the cloud would make his fingers tingle and burn like the blood had been frozen in his veins. “Though I guess since you’re not a  _ real _ rabbit it doesn’t matter too much if you eat meat, huh?”

The hellbunny formed its upper half again and fixed him with an unimpressed glare. “ _ Die, die, die _ ,” it muttered to him.

“Yeah, I know,” he said with a rough chuckle. “I’m an ass.”

He sighed wistfully, looking around the empty common area. It was  _ quiet _ without anyone here. Even when there  _ were _ other operatives, everyone was exhausted and their usual exuberance wasn’t there.

With the warmer weather came an increase in missions. Talon and other terrorist organizations around the world were acting as if they had woken from hibernation, spreading their numbers out in hungry teams as if to devour the world. As word spread of the new Overwatch, more missions came pouring in and Winston had not yet learned how to say ‘no’.

But things like that flew over his head. Diplomacy he was well enough at, but aiming to please everyone to get in a good word that Overwatch had reformed and was better than it had been didn’t sit right with him.

“I don’t like this,” he had warned Winston as the last carrier was loading up. Zenyatta and Ana, the last two healers on base, were already unpacking their gear in the cargo bay.

“I don’t either,” Winston had admitted with a sigh. “Especially since we would be leaving you all alone.”

McCree scowled, leaning further on his crutch. “I can take care o’ myself,” he informed their commander.

“I doubt it,” he heard Ana mutter; they both ignored her.

“What  _ I’m _ worried about is that all of our operatives are all spread so thin,” McCree told Winston quietly.

The gorilla huffed and pushed his glasses further up his face. “I know,” he said quietly. For someone as large as Winston, it wasn’t very quiet. “We need to expand our roster and we need to not burn out what agents we  _ do _ have.” He looked pointedly at McCree’s bum leg. Then he shook his head. “No, if we can make it through the next few days, we don’t have anything scheduled for a few days and we can take a breather. Then we can work out a better schedule for this.”

McCree nodded. “Not wantin’ ta tell you how to do your job, big guy, but we need ta be more…selective of these missions.”

“And we need more operatives,” Winston said with a nod. “ I have a few candidates lined up – an omnic in Numbani, an RDF sergeant from Volskaya, and a hacker from Dorado to name a few – and once we all get back and recover, we’ll more closely go over the candidate lists.” He sighed again. “But that is something to consider  _ later _ .”

“Come on, big guy!” Lucio called cheerfully from the top of the ramp. “Wheels up soon!”

Winston waved to show that he heard and then peered at McCree as Ana walked down the ramp toward them. “Everyone will be back in three days, four for the last of the stragglers. Are you  _ sure _ you’ll be okay?”

When McCree opened his mouth to give a saucy retort, Ana stepped up and pressed a gloved hand to his mouth. “Please excuse me, Winston, I’d like to have a quick word with McCree before we go.”

Knowing better than to argue, Winston nodded his goodbye and trotted up the ramp to get ready for the trip. “Aw, ma’am,” McCree whined, voice muffled by Ana’s hand.

“Don’t you ‘aw, ma’am’ me,” Ana said, removing her hand to shake her finger vigorously in his face. “You know  _ exactly _ why I’m here.” When he moved to protest, she slapped her hand over his mouth. “ _ No _ ; you  _ listen _ . When I get back, I better not find out that you had so much as  _ looked _ at a weapon, you hear? If I find  _ any _ blood, it better be from a freak nosebleed.” She leaned closer, somehow channeling the glare of two eyes into one. “Do you understand?”

A man with a history like McCree’s knew when to give in; he nodded mutely and was rewarded when Ana lifted her hand to pat his cheek.

“Good boy.”

He limped back to the hangar doors and waved as they closed. “Bye mom!” he yelled over the roar of the turbines and from the way he could see Ana pinch the bridge of her nose in exasperation, she heard it or somehow knew what he said.

Finding Helly had been a surprise though not an unwelcome one. Given how attached he was to Agent D.va, it was rather surprising to Jesse that he had been left behind. It made sense though, that not knowing too much about the smoke-creature, no one would be entirely certain what kind of combat application it would have. The last thing anyone would want was to spar with it and inadvertently teach it to fight any particular agent on base.

Still, Helly was good company. (Even though he only reluctantly responded to  _ Helly _ and simply preferred to be called Min…a consideration that would be concerning as it would imply a lot more intelligence than anyone gave him credit for. It was something that none of them wanted to think of given its origin in one of Moira’s old labs.)

The first day they watched old movies together and McCree fed it scraps under the table before they both remembered that there wasn’t much of a reason for them to hide. On the second day, Min joined him on the table in his usual medium-sized rabbit-form, watching him eat with liquid black eyes.

His diet followed that of a typical rabbit simply because it was the easiest. No one could tell if he really  _ was _ a rabbit that followed the same kind of body plan as Talon’s notorious agent, Reaper, or if he was something…else. Would he get sick if he ate meat? Milk? Eggs?

Not even Angela could tell and Min didn’t really make it easy to be checked over or studied even when Hana asked him very nicely to. McCree couldn’t blame him for that, though.

Later on in the second day, Min stole his burrito.

Which was  _ definitely not _ rabbit-safe (he thought longingly of the spicy salsa, the sour cream, cheese, pulled pork that had gone into it…) but Min didn’t seem too sick for the rest of the day so McCree figured that he was okay.

Y’ know… _ probably _ .

On the third day a storm was brewing: the sky turned dark and the winds began picking up until the distant hum of the rain on the building echoed through the empty halls. They were having lunch when the power cut out, plunging them into almost complete darkness if not for the dim light coming in through the windows.

The sudden darkness startled Min into dissolving, swirling in agitated little tornadoes over the tabletop. McCree pulled his plate out of the way and shoved the rest of his quesadilla into his mouth; he thought he heard Min give a disappointed little  _ meep _ .

“In the supply closet in the hall, there’s an electric lantern,” he told Min around the last mouthful of quesadilla. “If you can, do you think you could get it?”

The tornado swirled clockwise then counterclockwise, and then skittered off the table. He lost sight of it in the darker portions of the hallway as shaking his head, he stood and went to the stove.

“I’ll make you a plate of  _ gallo pinto _ ,” he called after the creature. He heard the distant echoes of his trilling reply.

The pilot lights of the stove cast an eerie blue glow on the underside of the pots on the stove and as he hobbled over with the help of his crutch, he made a mental note to send a message to Hana about her pet’s weird eating habits. 

Helly returned quickly with the requested light and McCree was momentarily perplexed to find that it had grabbed a  _ flashlight _ instead, and that instead of rolling along (as it tended to do with objects that could roll), it carried it among the gently pulsing waves of its smoke-like body. It let him pick the light up but when he moved to turn it on, it moved  _ quickly _ and plastered itself over the lighted end in a swirling miasma so that only the tiniest hint of light came out.

“What’s gotten-” McCree froze when the nebulous glob hissed.

It sounded  _ a lot _ like someone going,  _ shhh! _

Filing that tidbit of information away, McCree obeyed, a little nervous despite himself. He flicked the light off and Helly slid back down to the floor, swirling around his feet the way it did with Hana. Outside the wind moaned…

…and as the first shadow crossed the window he realized that it wasn’t the wind that was roaring, and it wasn’t from a downed tree that the lights were out.

“Good boy,” he whispered to Helly.

“ _ Mumf _ ,” Helly said from the shadows, the noise it made in agreement.

McCree gritted his teeth and lifted his crutch – it rattled too much, so he’d have to move without it as much as possible. “Are they in the base?” he whispered to Helly.

“ _ Die, die, die _ ,” it muttered, whatever that meant.

“Okay,” he said and crept along the dark corners of the kitchen and out into the hall. “We need to get to Athena’s server rooms.” He wrapped the bulb of the flashlight in his shirt to dim the light and used it just enough to see a few feet in front of him. “Warn me if someone’s coming.”

The motes of dust or nanites that made of Helly’s body glittered in the light as it drifted past him. It disappeared quickly and McCree made a mental note to discuss potential covert ops or intelligence missions with Winston and Hana.

He crept along the hall, gritting his teeth against the pain in his bum leg. By the time he reached the first junction he had to stop and prop himself up against a wall. “Helly?” he whispered into the gloom.

Something dark moved across the floor slowly toward his boot.

“Hey,” he said to it. “All clear?” he grunted when it didn’t answer. “Alright, not too far now.” He levered himself to his feet with a muffled grunt and gingerly leaned his weight on the crutch, praying that it wouldn’t rattle like it had been throughout that day. The pad at the end of the crutch slipped and with a muffled grunt he hit the ground hard.

…and with a wet splash.

His face was pressed into something wet on the ground and he could feel it soaking into his clothes.  _ A plumbing leak? Roof leak? _ He wondered to himself as he put his hands under him and began levering himself to his feet.

But it was too thick, too sticky to be  _ just _ water and it had a very metallic smell. The reality of it didn’t really sink in until he saw the flashlight. Uncovered, its light shone brightly on the surface of the liquid. It momentarily blinded him but as he reached for it, he caught sight of the liquid on his hands.

It was red.

When he grabbed the flashlight, he found a dismembered hand a few feet away. The walls were bathed with it, quite as if the poor fucker attached had exploded into chunks more resembling the remnants of the dry, flavorless meatloaf that Soldier 76 had tried to make once.

McCree carefully considered the hand as he carefully levered himself to his feet. In the end he decided to leave it for the time being and began limping down the hall.

At one of the junctions near Athena’s servers he found a small cone of swirling black powder like gunpowder. When he approached it coalesced into Helly’s usual form albeit with a reddish tint to its “fur”.

“Is there anyone nearby?” McCree whispered to the hellrabbit.

“ _ Mph _ ,” Helly muttered back, which McCree  _ hoped _ meant ‘no’.

He swung the light up and down the dark hallways. All of the walls and some of the ceiling was painted red. Occasionally there were a few larger chunks, usually hands, as well as the remnants of what McCree assumed were weapons. The smell of blood lay heavily in the still air.

“Did anyone get in the server room?” McCree asked Helly.

“ _ Mph _ .”

He swung the light back to toward the demon-creature. It flicked its ears forward, its eyes swirling red and the back to black. “Did  _ you _ do this?”

“ _ Mumf _ ,” Helly agreed and McCree shook his head.

“Is there anyone else out there?”

“ _ Mph _ .”

Shaking his head, McCree began limping toward the gym. “C’mon,” he muttered. “I think we both need a shower.”

Without the hot water heaters online, the water was cold but even in the midst of a summer storm it wasn’t so terrible a thing. He took some time on his leg, gently massaging the muscle and tendon around the joint. With Helly drifting after him like a shadow, he limped back to the kitchen and began warming a pot of water on the stove.

Then he went to the storage room (finding three more hands, strangely only the left ones, on the way), found a headlamp, an old mop and a bucket, and yet another left hand.

“Do you not like left hands?” McCree asked Helly.

“ _ Die, die, die _ ,” it muttered back and swirled around his ankles.

McCree dragged his haul back to the kitchen and set up the sink to fill up the bucket, pouring bleach in with the water. He sat down with a groan as he waited. Some of the hot water in the pot went to a towel to wrap around his knee. “It’s gonna be a  _ long _ night,” he told Helly.

“ _ Mph _ ,” it agreed.

\---***-*--

Extraction was a long and tiring process, but eventually the two primary Overwatch ships landed and broke open like eggs to release the on-duty agents. On the way back they had debriefed as a group via secure connection, leading them to be concerned that it had been a trap to lure them all away from the base.

Sometime during the last mission they had lost connection with Athena and McCree, leading to their urgency in returning. No one commented on how quiet Hanzo was, or how blue sparks rippled over his arms and shoulders.

They flowed out of the ship behind D.Va’s Defense Matrix and Reinhardt’s shield to find…Min.

A sonic arrow revealed no one else in visual distance.

Hana nudged her MEKA forward and held out one of her arm-cannons; pricking his ears forward, Min dissolved and flowed forward, scrambling up to form again on his new perch. “We lost contact with Athena, clever baby,” she told him. “Are you okay?”

As they watched, Reinhardt moving to overlap his shield with hers and Brigitte’s, Min flowed into the air and then drifted back down. Yes.

“Is McCree okay?” Hanzo asked tersely.

Min hopped again. Yes. They ignored how Hanzo’s shoulders slumped in relief.

“Are we in danger?” Hana asked.

Min made a lateral “hop”, moving to land on her other arm-cannon. No.

They all glanced at each other. “Why is Athena down?” Winston asked.

“ _ Die, die, die _ ,” Min hissed.

“Yes or no questions,” Hana pointed out. “Min, is Athena damaged?”

The rabbit seemed to consider that. It swirled into the air in the middle of Hana’s arms, forming a circle before landing on her other arm.

“He doesn’t know,” Hana translated.

“The power’s out,” Ana said, peering through her scope. “I don’t see any of the lights on.”

Hanzo snorted. “Is McCree still sleeping?”

This Min could respond and did so immediately: yes.

Hana released one of her joysticks and reached into one of the small pockets in her MEKA. “I have something for you, clever baby,” she cooed and brought out a dandelion. It was crushed and a little wilted from being pressed and held for a day, but Min’s ears still flicked forward excitedly.

“Focus,” Soldier 76 said tiredly. “Are the lights off because McCree is still sleeping?”

Min made a noise that eerily sounded like a laugh. It flowed to Hana’s other arm-cannon: no.

They traded glances. “Was there an attack?” Reinhardt asked urgently.

“Is McCree okay?” Hanzo asked urgently, his arm sparking again.

Min swirled. “He doesn’t know which to answer first,” Hana said apologetically. “Clever boy, was there an attack?”

Yes.

“Is McCree okay?”

_ Yes, yes _ .

Hana shrugged –  _ well there you go _ .

Ana’s fingers drummed impatiently on her rifle. “Were there any casualties?” she asked.

Yes.

“Did McCree fire his gun?”

Nonononono.

“What happened?” Winston asked, alarmed. “Is Athena safe? Did they get what they came for?”

Min swirled in a miniature tornado of black dust. “Yes or no questions only,” Reinhardt reminded Winston over his armored shoulder.

“Clever boy,” Hana cooed, ducking her hand under the cracked windshield protecting her face to offer the swirling smoke another dandelion. Min immediately stopped spinning and accepted the treat daintily. “Did they manage to take anything with them?”

Again, Min made a noise that sounded eerily like a laugh. Nonononono.

Ana drummed her fingers on her rifle. “A small team goes in,” Soldier 76 decided. “Determine what happened and if there are any pockets of resistance left. Everyone else waits here.”

_ Nonononono _ .

Hana grunted and putting her hands back on her joysticks, woke her MEKA back up into action. Seeming to sense her action, Min hopped over to the top of her dome. “Well if Min says it’s okay, then it’s okay,” she said and pushed the controls forward. “I’m going in - the MEKA’s low on power.” 

She grunted again when the HUD in front of her lit up in a blip of gold: Ana had shot her with her biotic rifle. “Sorry, couldn’t resist.” There was a sound as Ana swung her rifle over her shoulder. “I’m inclined to believe her,” she said simply and followed. 

They found the hangar...empty and Reinhardt made a soft disappointed sound. “Hush,” Brigitte said with a laugh as they overlapped shields. “You okay Hana?”

“Yeah,” Hana grunted as she climbed out of her MEKA. Grumbling, Winston and Soldier 76 helped her to plug the many cords in the ports needed to charge her MEKA. Seeing the dubious look on her face, Hana leaned over and patted her cheek gently, making a face when she had to stand on the very tips of her toes to do so. “Don’t worry, I’m fine.” 

Reinhardt’s giggling brought them back to reality - and not the hazy space they went to while staring at each other - and blushing, Hana drew her handgun as Min swirled around her ankles and knees. 

“Alright,” Soldier 76 growled. “Let’s focus.” 

Rolling her eyes, Hana looked down at Min. “Hey bud, can you find McCree for us?” 

Without forming into his usual shape, Min swirled in a small tornado of shimmering black mist (Hana translated this as a “yes”) before darting off deeper into the base. 

“Wait,” Lena said in the hallway outside of the main common area. “Was this...was this wall  _ always _ red?” 

They all stopped to look and sure enough one of the walls was dark red. 

So was part of the ceiling and about half of the floor.

They all looked at Min who had formed up into his rabbit form with a neat white bib beneath his black chin. “Min?” Hana asked cautiously. She pointed to the wall and it followed her finger before meeting her eyes again, pricking his ears forward attentively. 

He almost looked innocent. 

“Min...did you do this?” Hana asked, gesturing at the wall. 

Min’s eyes swirled red. “ _ DIE, DIE, DIE _ .”

Eventually they found McCree passed out on the couch, his bum leg propped up on the arm. He screamed in surprise when Ana pinched his nose shut. When he was awake, she grabbed ear and twisted. 

“I swear,” she said. “I can’t leave you alone! Look at this place! What a mess! Dirty dishes  _ all over _ the kitchen, and what did I tell you about bleeding?” 

“If you find any blood it had better be from a freak nosebleed,” McCree repeated dutifully. “Ow, Ana!” 

“Exactly!” Ana exclaimed. “And we come back and find  _ an entire wall covered in blood! _ ” She twisted his ear and then let go with a disappointed sigh. “That’s it,” she said, reaching for the gun at her hip. “You’ve lost all walking privileges.”

McCree sat up and hissed when it jostled his bum leg. “What? You can’t do that!” he looked helplessly at Angela behind her. “Can she do that?”

It turned out that she could and did. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> baby's first murder!


	21. Wheelchair Death Race

“Now ma’am,” McCree tried. 

“Don’t you ‘now ma’am’ me,” Ana said sternly. “You were warned about what would happen if I found any blood.”

“But it wasn’t even  _ my _ blood,” McCree whined. “And it was  _ Helly _ that did all the work, not me!”

Ana snorted. “I most certainly do  _ not _ believe that,” she informed him. “Now  _ sit _ !”

Grumbling still, McCree settled himself into the wheelchair with a pout. “But I-”

“No buts!” Ana snapped. 

Across the medbay, Genji snickered. He had been injured in one of the missions that had taken away all of the active agents on the base. Well, he had been  _ injured _ and then had somehow managed to  _ misplace his legs _ . 

“You two had better behave,” Ana said sternly, jabbing her finger first in McCree’s face and then in Genji’s. “Or so help me…”

“Yes ma’am,” they chorused meekly. 

-*-*

“You brought this on yourselves,” Hanzo told them tiredly when they went to him for sympathy. In hindsight, that was a terrible idea. 

“You really did,” Mei, who had been having tea with the archer, agreed with a giggle. 

“ _ Why is there blood all over my workshop?! _ ” Torbjorn had roared and both of them decided that it would be prudent for them to avoid the engineer. 

Min was likewise nowhere to be found, something that would have concerned McCree if Brigitte hadn’t told him that he and Hana were catching up while making basic repairs to her MEKA. 

Come to think of it,  _ everyone _ around the base was busy: a few were cleaning up the mess that Min had left of the Talon operatives that had attacked the base (again), some cleaning up the messes of  _ themselves _ that the agents had made on their missions, and the rest either resting or making their own repairs to their gear. 

Jesse was about to roll himself back to his and Hanzo’s quarters when he noticed the hill. Locking the wheels of his chair, he commed Genji.

*-*-*-

“In our defense,” McCree said to the vaulted ceilings as Hanzo dragged him along the ground by the collar of his shirt. “We were left unsupervised.” 

“ _ Ow _ ,” Genji complained when Hanzo “accidentally” let him hit a wall. A rope from storage had been looped around his torso and under the mangled joints of his shoulders and allowed Hanzo to drag him along albeit with a terrible screeching noise as his armor scraped on the ground. 

“At this rate,” McCree added conversationally. “You’re going to rub my pants completely off.”

Hanzo glanced down at the cowboy but ultimately didn’t dignify that with a response. “I think you’re sleeping on the couch tonight, Jesse,” Genji said in a stage-whisper to McCree. 

“Ain’t gonna get any for  _ weeks _ ,” McCree agreed, draping his uninjured arm over his forehead dramatically. He yelped when he felt a light tug and heard a soft rip. “Han? Darlin’? Yer gonna rip my shirt.”

“Good,” Hanzo muttered. He didn’t say anything else as he entered the med-bay, “accidentally” letting his burdens bump into the door frame as he did; they both yelped in pain.

For a long moment all of the healers (and their patients) were dead-silent as they stared at Hanzo and his burdens. Ana picked up her dart gun. “What happened?” she asked Hanzo. 

Genji, having approximately zero sense of self-preservation, flopped his head back and said glibly, “Wheelchair death race!” 

“How did you find them, Hanzo?” Angela asked as Zenyatta and Lucio pressed their hands over their faces as if ashamed to know Genji (or McCree). 

“Hana’s rabbit-demon came and found me,” Hanzo said, dropping the rope that was propping Genji up so that he fell with a clatter. He set McCree down more gently and stole his hat which he put on his own head. “They were at the bottom of the hill.” 

The healers all cocked their heads to the side almost in unison. “The hill by the stairwell to the observation tower?” Lucio asked. 

“No.”

“The hill by the landing pad?” Zenyatta suggested. 

“No.”

Angela frowned. “The hill by-”

“Probably not,” Hanzo interrupted. “No.”

“You didn’t even let me finish my sentence,” Angela pointed out. 

Hanzo huffed. “I found them  _ at the bottom of the hill _ .” He paused as if for dramatic effect. “ _ The very bottom _ .” 

“Not…” Angela lifted a hand to her mouth as if to stop herself from suggesting such an absurd concept. 

“Probably yes.”

Ana pinched the bridge of her nose. “The hill. The bottom of the hill  _ leading up to the base _ . The one with sheer cliffs and sharp turns that lead straight to a grisly death on the rocks below?”

“Bingo!” McCree said and flinched back from the upside-down glare he received from Ana. “In our defense, we were left unsupervised.” 

He had barely enough time to yelp when Ana shot him with a dart. Genji could only flop, being severely damaged, like a fish out of water before Ana shot him too. When they were both unconscious, all of the healers turned to Hanzo. 

“Who won?” Zenyatta asked. 

Hanzo huffed. “It was neck-and-neck and if Genji hadn’t  _ misplaced his legs _ he may have won,” he said. “McCree’s boots are long enough that he crossed first, but it was a close one.” 

Shaking his head, Lucio went to one of the computer consoles. “There goes  _ my _ bet,” he muttered, fishing out the little envelope tucked behind them. “I don’t know  _ why _ I bet against you,” he told Hanzo a little petulantly. He jabbed a finger at Ana as well, who didn’t bother to hide her smirk. “I don’t know  _ why _ I was dumb enough to bet against  _ you _ .

“What can I say?” Hanzo asked dryly, stepping over the prone forms of his brother and boyfriend to accept his and Ana’s winnings from Lucio and Angela. Zenyatta didn’t  _ really _ bet money (not having much of a need for it, himself) but he did offer an orange that had somehow gotten stuck in the orbit of the orbs around his neck. It didn’t  _ seem _ rotten so Hanzo pocketed it. “I know my brother and I know the cowboy.” 

Ana snorted as he split their winnings with her. She declined Zenyatta’s questionable offering of an orange. “Yes, you know his  _ big, strong arms _ I’m sure,” she teased. “Just remember that he used to be a scrawny little underfed thing.” 

“Pictures later?” Hanzo asked as he moved to leave. 

“During tea time,” Ana promised. He nodded at her and left. She scoffed down at the two unconscious operatives. “Wheelchair death race indeed.”


	22. Glassing a Wanker

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the spirit of new junkrat content (you better watch out, you better watch out, YOU BETTER WATCH OUT) here's...junkrat. doing some very un-junkratty things.

Undercover was not something that Lena did, but it was far from outside her abilities. Her gravity-defying hair, one of the many side-effects of her slipstream accident, needed a lot of attention, but after four hours and the participation of everyone on base that could braid it had the temporary illusion of a head full of kinky auburn hair. She was used to pretending to be someone else, though it made her uncomfortable, and this was really only a mission to gather information.    
  
It wasn’t even that unusual to have such a small team, just her and a partner, to meet with a potential weapons smuggler and bug him. Large-scale weapons smugglers were unfortunately a very real problem that local law enforcement was hard-pressed to handle on their own so missions like this were unfortunately nearly commonplace.    
  
No, the strangest aspect of this mission was her partner, but what better man for a mission involving volatile explosive materials than a demolition expert like Junkrat?

It was difficult to think of him as anyone else – like his alias, Jerome Nicholson – or to think of calling him anything other than his callsign and Junker name. He resembled some kind of rodent or perhaps some other kind of trash vermin with his glittering manic eyes, beaky nose, and leering grin, his hair in even wilder spikes than hers. Half the time parts of his hair and clothes were on fire and many on base often compared it to the miracle in the Bible of the bush that burned and wasn’t consumed. 

But of course none of this was said within earshot of him or Roadhog.    
  
They learned very quickly that Junkrat was very…odd. He and Satya somehow got along amazingly and were often found with their heads bowed over some kind of mechanical drawing together, talking in some kind of gibberish language in one of the labs they had appropriated for their own use. A sign hung over the door reading CAUTION: TURRETS MAY BE ACTIVE.    
  
The “may” was underlined a half dozen times.    
  
Regardless, the phrase made its way around the base:  ask yourself,  what would Junkrat do?  And then, well. Don’t do that.   
It served as a warning.    
  
Trailing the faint scent of kerosene, ash, and dust, Junkrat was the last person that Lena expected to be able to blend in and was left slack-jawed in her nice cocktail dress when he proved her wrong. The man that emerged to take her out on their “date” had clean dirty-blond hair that was tied into a neat horsetail behind his head by an immaculate black tie. Ash and dust had been scrubbed from his skin, revealing pale skin dusted with freckles and he was dressed nicely in a navy button-down shirt that was tucked into his black slacks. Even his prosthetics had been changed and he wore two matching shoes and his hand looked like something sleek and streamlined – almost like Satya’s arm.

If it weren’t for his wild eyes, beakish nose, and the cackling laugh he gave when he caught her staring, she wouldn’t have recognized him. “Betcha didn’t expect that one!”    
  
Behind him, Roadhog squeezed through the door and loomed over the both of them. He was in his normal combat gear, being a part of the team on-site for backup.    
  
“Aw, don’t worry,” Junkrat cackled, looking up at the giant of a man as if he had spoken. “We’ll be fine.” He wrapped his thin arms around as much of Roadhog’s enormous belly as he could manage. “See ya soon, Roadie! I’ll see if I can bring ya back somethin’ shiny.”    
  
Roadhog’s featureless mask swung to Lena with all the slow patience of a predator. He grunted. And like that, Junkrat – no, Jerome Nicholson – offered Julia Hanson his arm and they walked out to enjoy a nice visit to the pub.    
  
And of course, because it was just their luck, it went downhill from there.    
  
Junkrat, Lena found, was able to tone down his maniacal nature and was the picture of a courteous date as he held open doors for her, and pulled out chairs, and spoke in a voice other than his typical grating whine. They bought drinks and food and carried it back to seats they found around the curve of the bar top where they could watch everyone coming in and out of the pub.

The night dragged on and the time for their meeting came and went. To be safe, they stayed a few hours later, drinking and chatting and snacking on bar foods while making friends with their neighbors. Unfortunately one of them, a little too drunk, was also a little too bold. He leaned a little too close to Lena, rested his hand on the back of her chair, and tried to buy her drinks.    
  
At first, unfairly to Junkrat and likely borne out of spite, Lena thought that her “date” didn’t notice her discomfort. But she jumped when he leaned closer to her – but still within polite distance – to peer at the drunk man. “G’day!” he said cheerfully. “Sorry I ain’t been payin’ much attention t’ ya, mate, name’s Jerome. I see ya met my darlin’ Julia.”    
  
The drunk man sneered and wobbled as he leaned forward. “Oy,” he said and burped. “I saw her first.” With a wide grin he placed a possessive hand on Lena’s shoulder. “Ain’t that right, sweetness?”

For a long moment neither of them said anything. Lena looked at Junkrat who was eyeing her with a calculating look. Then his eyes slipped over her shoulder to look at the drunk man who was grinning smugly, revealing a gold tooth.    
  
“Well,” Junkrat said, all business as he leaned back slightly. “It’s getting late and it seems our friend won’t be showing up. I think it’s about time we go, Jules.”   
  
“You can,” the man said, digging his fingers into Lena’s shoulder.    
  
Junkrat gave him a frigid smile that was so at odds with his usual expression. He tipped his glass back and drank the beer in it, placing the empty in front of Lena. “Nah, mate,” he said, sounding almost friendly as he leaned his elbow on the bar and his chin on his fist. He glanced at Lena out of the corner of his eye. “See, it’s times like these that ya just gotta wonder…what would Junkrat do?”   
  
Clearly that wasn’t the response that the drunk man was expected – certainly Lena hadn’t – and they both stared blankly at him. With his free hand, Junkrat pointed first to Lena and then the empty glass he had put in front of her. It was a sturdy thing, closer to a stein for the German-style beer he had tried.    
  
“See,” Junkrat continued, seeming to ignore the drunk man now. “I promised Roadie I’d bring ‘im back somethin’ shiny and I’m likin’ the look o’ that gold tooth, if y’ know what I mean.”    
  
Lena stared at him in surprise but only for a brief moment. She brought a hand up to grab the glass as the man began to lean closer, his face twisting into a scowl at being ignored.    
  
When Lena paused to look at Junkrat again he grinned, as wide and maniacal as he did in combat and around the base when he was in his element. He cackled. “Glass the wanker.”    
  
Finding herself laughing despite herself – what would Junkrat do indeed – she gripped the glass and broke it against the drunk man’s face.

“And that,” Junkrat said with a wild flourish, back to his usual self as he pulled the gold tooth from his pocket. They had cleaned it in a gutter as they ran, having had the sense to Blink out of there before the bobbies could show up. Both were covered in sweat and sticky with the beer and liquor that had been spilled during the altercation that had in turn transformed into a pub fight. “Is how I got this. All yours Roadie.”   
  
On the couch, Lucio pinched the bridge of his nose as Roadhog lumbered to his feet. He pinched the tooth between two sausage-sized fingers, inspected it as closely as an appraiser would a precious stone, before tucking it reverently into one of the pockets on his vest. “Thanks,” he said and Lena realized with a jolt of surprise that he was talking to her.   
  
“So you started a pub fight,” Lucio said. “Just so we’re clear.”   
  
Junkrat’s grin disappeared but it was Roadhog that answered. “Good,” he grumbled. He seemed to eye Lena and then Junkrat before nodding again.    
  
Throwing his hands in the air, Lucio shook his head. “Alright,” he said though he seemed to be fighting a smile nonetheless. “But I’m not explaining it to Winston why we can’t come back to London for a while.”

___

Several hours later, Lena was explaining why they couldn’t come back to London for a while. 

 


	23. A Balanced Breakfast

 

Angela Ziegler was having a less-than-stellar morning. 

She’s practically had to strap Lena’s chronal accelerator to a chair before she could check the young Brit for wounds, only half processing her account of the mission through all of the Britishisms and Australianisms and insane speed through which it was all being delivered, and her relief that Lena seemed completely unharmed (oh the blood’s not mine, luv!) was quickly buried in the unbridled frustration that came with trying to convince Junkrat to go near any form of modern technology. She was just about ready to sedate him and conduct her examination that way, but Roadhog had planted himself in the corner to oversee, and as accommodating as Mako could be, she was confident that wouldn’t be taken with grace and dignity. 

(Mako, in the corner, was thinking similarly)

At long last, all was said and done, and Mercy looked at her watch to decide if it was bedtime- and discovered that it was long past 6 in the morning. She heaved a sigh. Jack was surely awake, as was McCree, and half of the base with him as he and Hanzo tended to try and start their days on a high note. She had better go get breakfast. And, well. Pharah’s room was right next to Jesse’s. If she happened to be awake...

Angela was on the very cusp of a good mood when she got to the door of the dining hall-

 

And then she smelled the grease. 

_

Hanzo, already starting on the plate of bacon, was eyeing the contents of the pan as McCree poured it into a half-full jar.

“Why would you keep that?”

“Best thing to cook in! You can add it to everythin, too. Save some of that bacon I gotta make my special meat wraps later-”

 

“JESSE MCCREE!”

“Oh, shit.”

 

Mercy did not immediately follow up on her yell, standing in the doorway and spluttering with rage as she tried to find the words to adequately summate her fury. As she did, movement caught the corner of her eye. Jack, trying to flee out of the opposite door, holding an entire plate of sausages that glistened with grease. She raised a finger, pointing at him like an accuser on a police lineup. 

“JACK FRANCIS MORRISON I AM ASHAMED OF YOU. YOU’RE THE ONE WHO-”

She stopped, as it dawned on her. She lowered her hand, looking up in the rafters. Jack was still frozen, the fork still in his hand. 

“You’re the one.” she said, quieter, but with intensifying conviction. “You’re the one who put “a balanced breakfast” on the rule board! Athena! Call Winston! We need a rules review!”

McCree groaned.

“Angie surely you’re not serious-”

__

An hour later, they were all piled into the meeting room. Angela had long since gone off topic, pulling up holographic displays of the human body on the board and yelling about nutritional balance-

“-and I am well aware that the current science indicates that vegetable oils are high in Omega-6 polyunsaturated fatty acids and shouldn’t be cooked in, animal fats are certainly better, but you can’t have meat for every meal! I haven’t seen a speck of green in the fridge that wasn’t Hana’s godawful energy drinks-”

“-hey!”

“In MONTHS. Months! How you all are managing to stay fit enough to keep up in combat is a mystery I should be making millions publishing the results of rather than chasing after all of you in an attempt to extend your life spans but I’m just-” Mercy was actually beginning to tear up.

“I just want everyone to be healthy! Is that- is that too much to-” her shoulders started to shake, and she fled the room, Fareeha giving her mother a look and then following after a moment later. 

76 watched her go, and then...

Jesse made a small sound of shock, causing the others to look back towards him from the door where they’d watched Mercy depart.

Soldier 76 did the one thing no one had ever seen him willingly do.

He took off his visor.

He squinted menacingly out at the world for a moment, fishing into his pocket. Jesse lets out another noise of shock when he pulls out a bright pink pair of reading glasses and puts them on. He glowers in Jesse’s general direction.

“They were a gift.”

“..uhuh.”

Jack Morrison sighed.   
“Alright. Not the point. How are we going to fix this?”

__

Angela woke up late the next day, groggy and feeling vaguely like something was unplacably wrong. Subtly wrong. 

She sat up in bed, trying to put her finger on what it was. There was the faintest buzz at the back of her skull.

“Athena?”

_ “Yes, Angela?” _

“Is...” Angela tried harder to put her finger on it. “This may seem odd, but is the base secure? Are my windows in the same position they were last night? Has anyone been in my room?”

Athena paused a moment, as though considering her response. When the ai spoke again there was a distinct undercurrent of amusement.

“ _ Dr. Ziegler, I assure you the base is secure. If you are feeling as though something is different, a quick glance at my datalogs can answer that for you.” _

Angela sighed with relief, yes, of course, Athena would know.   
“Yes please, Athena.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, not even a “quick glance”’s worth, Athena replied-

_ “You have never been in your room when the sun was shining through your window at this angle, Dr. Ziegler.” _

Angela pondered that for a moment, looking around again. It was very bright, she’d assumed it was her overheads turning on to wake her. Only, she never needed an alarm, because there was always some catastrophe-

The light.

The sun was shining directly in her window.

_ Because it was past noon. _

Angela swore in German, throwing herself out of bed and into her closet to get dressed for the day- calling to Athena as she went-

“Is everything alright? Is there a problem with the communication systems?”

“ _ No Dr. Ziegler. Zenyatta and Lucio took over standard procedure at the clinic today. There have been no outgoing missions.” _

Angela paused, her labcoat uneven on her shoulders.

“...why not?”

_ “There are currently no agents capable of fieldwork” _ _   
_ Angela felt another spark of panic, but reminded herself that Athena had everything in hand so far. She kept her voice steady.

“If there was an emergency then why wasn’t I called?”

_ “Agent Zenyatta reassured me that he was more than capable of handling a little bit of food poisoning.” _

Angela took a deep breath. Inhale. Exhale. Stay calm. “ _ What? _ ”

_ “It seems that they took your ‘balanced breakfast’ lecture to heart, _ ” Athena said dryly. _ “Their breakfast had balanced cultures of E.Coli, Salmonella, Listeria, Clostridium perfingens, Campylobacter jejuni… _ ”


End file.
